Third morning after surgery

Arrived about 11AM to find a nurse performing percussion on Muriel's chest.  That was unnerving, but she didn't seem concerned!  We washed up and she went over the events of the previous night and the plan laid out by the doctors during their morning rounds.

She was percussing her chest because the last x-ray showed that a portion of her right lung hadn't completely opened up, and they didn't know if it hadn't expanded or was possibly congested with phlegm.  The percussion should help break it up if there, and otherwise should help the lung open up.  Even with this problem her numbers are looking good, and this shouldn't stop her coming off the ventilator.

The first thing to notice was that her chest tube was removed.  The tube had been in since surgery to drain fluids from the body cavity.  Since she has been on diuretics for the past two days and the swelling has basically ceased, the fluid draining had reduced to just a few ml.  The diuretics have been reduced as well and will probably be ceased today. The tube was removed at 5AM.

She then explained that Muriel did two sets of four hours off the ventilator (CPAP mode), and was due right now to go back on.  As a result of her perfect blood gas tests the doctors decided it was time to extubate instead and lose that horrible tube down her throat.  So we were kicked out for twenty minutes for that procedure.

So here we sit in the waiting room again, and its hard not to feel a bit anxious.  Removing the tube has some possible complications (I linked to these yesterday), and once she loses the tube it will be difficult to go back.  But that is why the tests were run last night to see how she fared off the ventilator and she did very well.  No reason to believe that won't continue once the tube is removed - in fact she should do better if anything.  The tube was quite restrictive to her breathing - like us trying to breathe through a straw!

Some final plans for the day - she should lose the tube currently in her nose down to her stomach, which they were using to manually suction excess fluids.  Several of the pumps that have been turned off will be removed.  The leads for the pacemaker will remain for now - they should be close to the last things to be removed.  When we go back in she should only have a Cannulas in her nose where they will be pumping humid air for her to breathe.

Will post results later!