1/10 7:00 pm

I know this isn’t a great picture of Ethan. He is still so out it. He is now boney. But we are going to fix all of that. He is still very sick and frail but headed in a good direction. Poor kid!

When I came back from the shower, there were two doctors and a nurse in my room. Crap! “What’s going on?” I glanced at the monitors and my eyes darted from number to number to get an answer before either doctor even began to talk.

“We lifted his paralytic. He is moving already.”

I look down and there Ethan is, with his arms having rigid weak but definite movements. 

“Oh!” I said as I watched his arms jolting around like a broken robot.

“I am going to need more coffee for this.” I grabbed my coffee cup and filled it up.  I switched gears. Ok. So today we are looking at delirium. 

They bumped up his sedation a bit to help ease out of paralytic. The delirium has not reared its ugly head yet. Thank goodness.  I wasn’t ready.

We got a visit from the renal doctor. She was happy with the amount of fluid we took off but he didn’t make any urine in the past 24 hours. Today they are going to see if they can force the kidney(s?) to work by turning Janice down a little. Over the past 12 hours, there is still no urine. We will see how he does tomorrow with some diuretics and a urine challenge.

Ethan seems to be doing ok off the paralytic. He is still heavily sedated. He occasionally moves his hands and arms and he will do small coughs when asked, to help get get the lung yuck up.

At one point I came back from the bathroom and Ethan’s nurse was sitting outside his room laughing hysterically looking at her phone. She looked at me with tears in her eyes. I looked at her phone and there is Ethan, talking about his heart condition.  The nurses really liked that I taped his business card with YouTube channel and Instagram on it. She then quoted “it’s just part of my body defying any sort of normalcy of a normal human.”

I started laughing too. “He’s not wrong.” She says “I know!” It was good to share a laugh.

When I was getting ice, I ran into his other doctor who said. “I think he has finally turned a corner towards the right direction.” I was appreciative to hear that but would just like to be cautious. I have to admit, I am looking forward to smelling a rose.

We have kept working on his lungs, physical therapy and keeping him warm because the dialysis chills his blood a little. He was weaned off another medication today. Woo hoo!

Tomorrow is Monday. The start to a busy week. Lots of doctors in and out. More extensive bloodwork. We will find out about his next heart cath to look for rejection, ultrasound to look for the elusive kidney etc. 

I did 13 flights today. It doesn’t take too long. I feel like I accomplished something when I am done.  We are going to try and keep this momentum.