About an hour after they had rushed Collin back to the PICU to place the drain, they told us we could see him. The sight shocked me; his head had a large dressing on it, and there was now a thin tube coming out from under that dressing. The tube was connected to a piece of equipment, the drain, that collected the CSF that drained out of Collin's head. The drain had to be kept exactly level with Collin's ear, and the nurses did use a level to make sure it was where it needed to be. They explained that the drain was at zero, and that eventually they would challenge it by slowly raising the level higher; that way they could see the amount of pressure that was needed to drain the fluid out of Collin's head. Collin's hands were also tied to the bed now, to prevent him from grabbing the drain and pulling it out. I completely understood the necessity, but that didn't make it any easier to accept the fact that I couldn't hold my baby anymore. Collin's neurosurgeon felt that there was a 60/40 chance that Collin would end up needing a shunt, so that surgery was tentatively scheduled for the following Monday.
Since they were having more and more trouble with drawing Collin's blood for lab work (his arms were getting bruised from all the needle sticks, and they were getting less and less blood from him because they'd used most of his veins), they also talked to us about placing a peripherally inserted central catheter, or PICC line. It would be a larger IV line that would be placed in a larger vein, and they wouldn't have to treat him like a pincushion anymore. They would do an ultrasound so they would know where in his arm to insert the catheter, and they would sedate him a little so the procedure wouldn't hurt. They planned on placing the PICC line the next day.
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