Petra's surgery went very well, and in fact, the Dr.'s felt that she was doing so well after the intubation that they decided not to send her to the ICU, which they had initially planned. She slept most of the day, and Dusty left to go sleep at the hotel. Things were going fine, other than the fact that she was very hungry, but threw up up twice.
It started getting late, and we'd had to get up at 5 so I told Petra that she could keep watching TV, but I was going to sleep. I got into my PJ's and took out my contacts. I waited until the last minute to do that because I can only see about 6 inches in front of my face without them and my glasses are broken. Anyway, I tried to lie down, but she kept getting me up to do little tiny things. Finally, she admitted that she was getting tired, so I turned off the TV. That made her really upset, and so she started to cry. Well, I couldn't see that anything was wrong because I couldn't see her, but her blood oxygen level went down to 15% (it's supposed to be in the high 90's or even 100%). Her alarm went off and the nurse came in. It took me a moment to realize that something was really wrong. The nurse said that she was ashen and she wasn't responding, so the nurse called a code blue (which means that she stopped breathing.) In about 10 seconds there were about 20 people, doctors and nurses, in the room trying to help. She coughed and started breathing again, but she was very frightened. They took a portable chest x-ray and turned off the narcotics that she was receiving through an epidural. Narcotics can make kids not breathe (suppress their respiratory drive.) I called Dusty and he came back to the hospital. I think that she had a bunch of junk in her throat that she didn't want to cough up because her throat hurt and when she got upset she choked on it.
The doctors have decided that it was because she was receiving more narcotics than she needed. Whichever way, it hasn't happened again, but the doctor said that if it does, they will take her to the ICU and figure it out. It was a very scary night. She's doing fine today, but without the narcotics, pain may be an issue. Somehow, I slept okay, but Dusty sure didn't.
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Yikes! So glad they had her effectively monitored and were able to resuscitate her.
I have learned that this is why doctors have to undergo such grueling training: what they do is so dangerous to patients. You can kill a patient just like that with many of the medications and procedures doctors use. I wouldn't want to work that hard, but I'm very grateful that they do.
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