Yesterday was her last day with this nasty ol' tube.
Whew...tiring morning. They came in about 9:30 to sedate Kate for her chest tube removal. She had a wild reaction to the morphine and started screaming, kicking and thrashing all over the place. Ugh. To 'calm' her down, they gave her another medicine that I can't spell--chloryll-something-or-other. It increased her mania. Great.
We had to hold her down to get the chest tube and central line out--she was shrieking and yelling, "No! No! STOP!" I felt so bad for her, and was thankful that they had also given her Versed to cause amnesia.
After she was bandaged up, I tried rocking to her, singing to her, walking with her, lying in bed with her. NOTHING worked. She was hysterical with glassy eyes and it became obvious that we were going to have to let the medication run its course.
They wanted to get her echocardiogram done and took us downstairs. I knew she wasn't going to calm down, but we went through the motions of trying. My gut told me that she needed to wait until tomorrow to have all the exit testing done.
Thankfully, after another 20 minutes of hysteria, they came to the same conclusion. She stayed bonkers for a full hour and my arms were shaking after wrestling the little alligator for that long! Even after she calmed down, she has continued to be very grumpy and not herself.
Thank goodness for the Elmo DVD that our roommates gave us when they left!! It has kept her entertained (although I am definitely on Elmo-overload!).
Tomorrow she will get a chest x-ray, echo, and EKG to make sure things are okay and then she should get discharged. I think she and I will go hang out in our hotel room until Jeff gets in from Boston and he can pick us up around 7:30PM or so.
Finally asleep
Thanks for PFK!!
