Thursday, February 23, 2006
This is from this afternoon. I don't know if you can tell, but the swelling is slightly less, and his color is a tiny bit better.
What you can see more clearly is the 3 chest tubes (the red ones) and the peritonaeal drain tube (at the top of the screen, right hand cornerish, white thingy coming out of a white square bandage - the tube looks sort of green, there near those red/blue dots.) The blue tube at the top is his ventilator, which is in his mouth and down his throat. The other tube in his mouth is so that they can administer a drug directly into his stomach because it can't be given intravenously.
The black thing on his head monitors his temperature, the gold heart on his belly keeps track of his skin temp, and the bandage on his chest covers his incision. Earlier, it said "chest open" but now it's marked with the date and time it was last changed and the nurse's initials. Up top there is Dad's finger in Nova's hand - the red light is the monitor that keeps track of his oxygen levels - it's wrapped around his little finger.
The wires all go from different electrodes that monitor heart rate and blood pressures in different parts of his body - all attached to a load of monitors. The other tubes are all medicines that go into one or another of his IV's, it's a whole network of IV tubes going to 3 different sites, one in his right arm, one in his femoral artery (right groin area) and one in his femoral vein (left groin area) That pink doohicky is the part of his ventilator that allows them to drain any mucus from his lungs...
Any questions? ;) Lots of stuff... And I didn't even get a picture of all the contraptions that are pumping the meds into him, or any of the monitors (there's lots of them too) and I figured we could all pass on the various collection units for chest drainage, urine output, peritonaeal drainage etc...
Congenital Heart Defect
posted by Erin @
12:08 AM
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