Day 17 - Breathe

Daniel has had a busy morning. He heard that he slept better last night, but his breathing and oxygen intake is slipping below what we'd like to see.

His PT came in this morning and worked his legs for awhile, stretching and moving his feet some. We got him sitting up more in his bed for awhile. Sitting up makes him work harder, buy may also improve the fluid buildup in his lungs - which I'll write about in a few paragraphs...

Maintenance - after about 7 days the central line where Dan receives IV fluids has to be changed. For Daniel his central line is in his leg (since it's not burned). This is a procedure that is relatively simple (since there's already one there), but like any of the many procedures he has had performed on him we have to sign a consent form. This task is also one of those procedures that it's important to limit chance of infection so everyone is kicked out of Dan's room to do the task. I'll bet Daniel wishes he could also leave the room for this and let someone else get it done to them!

Daniel's latest chest x-ray showed a fair amount of fluid in his left lung (right lung looks clear). His ability to get oxygen into his body is impaired and they think that it was mostly his right lung that is doing the work. So even with the aid of an oxygen mask and oxygen entering his nose (although right now he seems to be mostly a mouth breather) he's not getting his oxygen level up above 90% where they would like to see it (refer to yesterday's post - Day 16).

The plan for this morning then is to do a Bronchoscopy which is a fancy word for "shove a camera down his throat and into his lungs, peek around and vacuum up anything that looks nasty and take a sample of whatcha got to the lab and make sure there's no infection" kind of a thing. They gave Dan some sedatives and localized pain relief for his mouth and throat then performed the procedure in his room. We stayed in the room and observed the procedure while the doctor explained what we were seeing.

Around here we don't perform procedures (consent form again) without a good reason. There's about a 50% change that the task might clear up the issue or the team may determine that Daniel may need to go on the vent again if his breathing doesn't improve. Right now they don't think it's pneumonia (no high fever, the x-ray looks different and other factors).

The doctor wanted to see if there might be a clump of junk that might be blocking the left lung and if so they could clear it up with suction or identify another reason for the cloudy condition of his left lung. From what we learned the fluid buildup wasn't significant, there didn't seem to be anything specific blocking his lung and we're waiting for results from the collection they gathered.

The team will continue to treat the condition. We're trying to coach Daniel to cough big and loud to help bring up anything that he's moving out of his lungs. By later today we should know a bit more. At that point I'll update today's post.
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The updated x-ray showed some improvement, but we'll need things to clear up in his lung by tomorrow morning or the team may get him back on a vent which could eventually turn into a trach. So we want him to get better without all that.

The current plan it to have the respiratory therapist or nurse clear his airway (can't remember the acronym) every few hours. Also we're sitting him up more vertically so he can cough and hopefully expand his lungs out and get that stuff out of there. If we could get him standing and even moving some that would probably take care of all of this, but he's really weak today.

With the required dressing change that commenced when we left tonight around 5:30 comes a bit of exhaustion and pain control so I doubt he will be ready to do any standing and since there's no PT around to assist in a safe manner that isn't likely to happen. So we will see how he is in the morning.

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I have to say right now I don't care for the final line to this song (Breathe (In the Air)) by Pink Floyd, but otherwise it's a favorite tune of mine and it's playing in my head. Daniel keep on breathing, deep and strong!