Hannah’s recovery from heart surgery | Day 3

Steady progress

4 am
Woke up to Hannah sitting up in bed (supported by her lovely nurse, Kate) , having a big cough and struggling to shift the ‘frog in her throat’.  She had vomited a little but was fine – had a good drink.
Was much stronger getting herself into sitting up position and leaning forward. Only needed minimal support.
Back to sleep with oxygen face mask on in addition to oxygen nasal prongs.  O2 Sats at 100% but still taking rapid, shallow breaths.

6.15am

Woke again – similar to the 4am wake-up but don’t think Hannah was sick this time.

7.15am

As we were in an HDU room (High Dependency Unit), opposite the nurse’s station, I woke up to many loud talking voices as the day shift started to arrive and handovers were starting to take place.  Time to think about getting up and getting my camp bed folded up before 8am.

I felt very lucky and relieved – Hannah had had a good night.  No major incidents or setbacks overnight, which is always a worry, but especially on the first night back on the ward.

Ward rounds

Doctors were generally happy with Hannah’s progress.  They spent some considerable time debating which (if any) diuretics to give – her kidney function had improved but still wasn’t quite right, she was slightly ‘positive’ on her fluid balance but her bloods were still ‘dry’.  It’s all about finding the right balance until her body works properly again!

Her last chest x-ray (which had been looked at by the ICU doctors and also by the on-call doctor on the ward during the night as I was a bit concerned about a weird thing happening in her chest when she breathes* and been declared clear every time!) showed some consolidation in the bottom of her lungs, which may indicate an infection, as well as a slight pneumothorax at the top of her chest.  The senior doctor therefore prescribed antibiotics.

They took her off the continuous (and ‘clicker’)morphine altogether and prescribed Oramorph (oral morphine) to be taken as needed.

The doctors also ordered an ECG and, provided everything was fine, they would then pull out the pacing wires.  Today was also earmarked for changing the wound dressing.

I asked about the weird thing on Hannah’s chest* but the doctor seemed unperturbed.  He kind of mumbled that it might be linked to the pneumothorax but was not particularly interested.

Bath and breakfast

I helped the nurse give Hannah a bed bath and get her to stand on the scales to be weighed (important for fluid balance and for medication prescription), then onto a comfy armchair to sit upright properly for breakfast.  Although she didn’t eat her full bowl of Coco Pops, she devoured a good amount with gusto!  She couldn’t shovel them into her mouth fast enough!

We also got Hannah into her PJ tops so she wouldn’t just sit there in her bra & knickers.

The day

Hannah was due to be moved out of HDU onto the main ward.  Because of her age and thanks to room availability, she was given a completely private room with en-suite bathroom (the previous one in HDU was almost private – 2 rooms separated by a wall and an open doorway/arch, sharing one bathroom and requiring anyone wanting access to the 2nd room to walk through Hannah’s).  There are advantages to being admitted on the ward in a children’s hospital as a very grown-up teenager!

I suggested to the nurses that we could get Hannah to WALK from her old room to her new one – the physio had told me, after all, the day before that she wanted Hannah to do deep breathing exercises ever hour or so and that she wanted her sitting that day and walking the next.

We got all the drips etc, got her onto a portable oxygen tank and off we went.  Hannah leant on me and walked slowly, but she wasn’t in pain, she didn’t pass out and she didn’t lean all her weight on me, either.  She did it!  And I got a proper cuddle out of it before we put her into bed. That was wonderful 🙂 I miss my babychick cuddles and I know she misses them, too.  After that, she was wiped out and went straight to sleep in her new room.

She then had a half dose of Oramorph so she’d be well-sedated to have her pacing wires out and dressing changed.  She was so zonked she never noticed any of it!!  That was her out cold for a few hours.  She missed her lunch and just slept and slept.

My mum arrived and Hannah slept through it.  Simon’s aunt and uncle came to visit and the Physiotherapist came shortly after that.  That certainly woke Hannah up!!

She had to do breathing exercises using an incentive spirometer and she really didn’t want to.  She kept shaking her head ‘no’ and turning away but the Physio was very good.  He told her ‘no’ wasn’t in his vocabulary and that one day she may be a cardio-thoracic surgeon and boss him around but that for now, he’s the boss! I liked him.  He got Hannah to do a lot!  He couldn’t get her to walk because she was so drowsy from the Oramorph in the morning that she could have fallen over, but he really worked on her sitting posture and also got her to do some basic leg-raising exercises just to get her mobile.  He then positioned her really well in bed so she’d be very upright and not slide down the bed.  She slept for ages again after that.  Wiped out!

When Simon’s mum and Charlie arrived, Hannah was having a heart scan.  Everything fine, but that woke her up – she slept through most of it but when they had to press quite hard near the top of her wound, she was in quite a bit of pain.  I explained to the doctors I didn’t want her to suffer but that she also needs to get better and can’t do that if she’s constantly sleeping because of the morphine.  They prescribed an anti-inflammatory (Diclofenac) to take in addition to Paracetamol for pain relief.  Let’s hope it does enough – she’s been doing great so far with minimal pain, but she probably still has lots of morphine in her system.

The nurse asked the doctor again about the weird thing on Hannah’s chest*

The nurse was in fact quite fascinated by it.  The doctor had another look, felt around her collarbones for crackles indicating that she has a pneumothorax and said the weird thing* was probably caused by that.  The nurse got me to feel the ‘crackles’ from the pneumothorax.  It feels weird…lots of snap, crackle and pop to the touch…or a bit like bubbles in sparkling water.  We have our very own human bubble-wrap!! heehee  The pneumothorax should dissipate by itself within a couple of days and hopefully the weird thing* will go with it.

I then got Hannah to do her breathing exercises again (she needs to do 10 repetitions every hour when she’s awake) and she already did better than she had done previously.  I then walked her (with Charlie’s help) to the toilet for another wee at long last.  The walk did her good!  We got her into an armchair to eat her dinner – she had a bit of chicken curry, some Quavers and a bit of chocolate sponge cake with custard.

She also managed to open and read cards she’d received, then also brushed her teeth, which must have felt wonderful.

Funny moment

She hadn’t eaten much (or drunk much – now she can, and MUST, have plenty to drink – full fluid allowance of 2.5l per 24 hours!), she doesn’t want that much.  Typical!

She then got a bit upset and, not for the first time this hospital stay, said “I want to go home”.

I explained that if she wants to get home quickly and reduce her time off school, she needs to eat, drink, do her breathing exercises, get up and about etc.  She picked up the spoon and immediately wolfed down a few more mouthfuls of cake, followed by gulping down an entire cup of water!  Talk about determination!!

After all that exertion, she was completely wiped out and just slept.  Simon’s mum went home and Charlie stayed with us.  We’d not seen Charlie properly since we’d left her in Italy with my mum at the end of our full family holiday for her to continue her holiday without us.  It was great to finally have a bit more than just a few minutes with her and to just be us, as a family, having a giggle.  It won’t be long before Hannah fully joins in again and the family is properly complete again!

We stayed long enough for Kate to see her as she’d not seen her since she was 5 or so, then Charlie and I went to the cinema as Simon was staying with Hannah tonight.   It was a lovely evening with Charlie.  We’re now in parents’ accommodation together.  Charlie asleep, me blogging.

I am immensely grateful for how well everything’s gone so far and hope things continue to go as well as they have done.  I hope Hannah has a good night and Simon gets some sleep.  I am always a bit nervous going back to my children in hospital after I’ve been away for a few hours or overnight as I never know what I’ll find in terms of how they are or what setbacks may have happened while I was away!

Time to get some sleep now!

*The weird thing is a strange dome shape that appears on her chest, just above her surgery wound, every time she exhales.