Oedema is a condition caused by excessive fluid. It’s not really a serious condition but it does make the skin look all loose and puffy. Our little (not so little at the momemt) Matty currently has some pretty serious oedema, so much so that he kinda looks like the stay puff marshmallow man. To treat [...]
Well, Matty’s one of the older babies in the ICU now (actual, not corrected age), but he’s still learning new tricks. Tonight, his new trick is splinting. The ventilator goes to give him a good breath, but he splints against it… This results in the ventilator alarming “tube obstructed” until he decides to let it [...]
Well, on the Queen’s birthday (the WA queen of course), Matthew seems pretty stable. Still resting up today, he’s had his morphine lowered to now less than half of what it was yesterday. His breathing is fairly consistent, but as per usual, he reacts to handling with desats and bradycardia. All in all, he’s doing [...]
Our young man is continuing his bounce back this morning. His stoma bag is seeing a little bit more action, which is an important sign that his GI tract is working, and there’s no upper GI blockage. Mum and Dad have been able to get in a fair bit because of the having a long [...]
Matthew’s looking much happier this evening. We just had a good chat with the doctor, and with the nurse that was looking after him last night. It would seem that last nights bagging was a result of the ventilator tube placement. Repositioning the tube seems to have done the trick, and he’s been a fair [...]
Matthew’s fairly stable. It’s been a very eventful 24 hours. He had to be “bagged” overnight a couple of times. We were there for the first “bagging”. It’s not really all that pleasant, but the staff are very competent and on the ball. They know what they’re doing and very methodical about it.
‘Bagging’ is when [...]
It’s kind like running a marathon. Having a child in the NICU, that is. You talk to some people who think you’re going to spend every minute at you child’s bedside, but the truth is.. you can’t. Just like running a marathon, if you’re out of the blocks sprinting, you simply aren’t going to make [...]
Matty’s just had his contrast x-ray. They got some really good pictures of the barium going down into his stomach, and passing into the first and second parts of the small intestine. Into the third part of the intestine, it stops, but that was expected because of the lack of peristalsis due to the morphine. [...]
As one of the paediatricians said this morning, “Matthew’s writing his own textbook”. Of course, i’ve spoken to at least a dozen doctors this morning about what’s going on. He’s had a couple of x-rays and he’s definately getting that contrast x-ray at 1400 today. It would seem that the perforation isn’t down in the [...]
Again.
There’s a couple of places you really don’t want to be right now. One of them is in Matty’s position. The other is inside of his parent’s heads.
We got another ‘one of those calls’ again this morning. During the night young Matthew’s tummy became increasingly distended to the extent whereby they did an x-ray and [...]
