Should Post Something

Gabby and I were just talking and saying we should post something.  For the past 48-60 hours Hudson has been fairly stable, but still quite weak.  They decided to add a drug called Digoxin “to help the heart ‘squeeze’ more efficiently”.  About 3 hours later after his second dose for the day (2x a day), he started to show slight signs of irregular heartbeats and I mentioned to the nurse that “this is where it started” last time and within the hour his heartrate started to peek into the 200’s again.  Again, we had to be Hudson’s advocate and strongly oppose the Digoxin.  It’s not a nice drug anyways as it’s toxic.  One of the problems we’re noticing with these medications is that the different teams really have no clue what the other ones are doing and we’re seeing things that are most likely working against each other.  For example, a drug/beta-blocker sotalol was added by the electrophysiology team to try and help with this arrhythmia but of course have no idea that he’s on an antacid and they don’t mix so well (we have to do our own reading to find this out?).  Other things like digoxin raises potassium which causes arrhythmias… he has a potassium supplement… spironolactone (diuretic) elevates digoxin to critical levels, etc etc… this has been a frustrating battle but we will continue to counter or challenge them to explain why they are giving things and ask about these interactions…  It was different when he was getting things through an IV because they HAVE to check things are compatible before mixing… when he gets things orally, they don’t check… I can’t imagine what his little tummy is doing when things don’t mix…

Today they changed his blow-by oxygen to prongs… why?  we don’t know yet… but we do know the 2 prongs in his nostrils are annoying and they are forcing air into his airway.

Weening off of morphine was going to be scheduled for 3 weeks… three!  he’s only been on it for  just over a week.  they will accelerate the ween after us challenging that plan.  Hudson has done well with weening off morphine 3 times in the past in less than a week.  “Withdrawal” scores are incorrectly inflated after being challenged by us.  A lot of symptoms can easily be attributed to other things (e.g. upset when he wakes… he’s not flailing or shaking… he just had his second surgery and his tummy bugs him).

Tomorrow they will want to increase his calories on his formula again.  Someone gave us the heads up but we’ll have none of that as this is the same pattern that put us here in the first place…

Gabby is saying less ranting and get to bed.. so signing off for now!  G’Night!  The title should probably change from “Should Post Something” to “Dad’s Update turned to Random Rants”