Last Thursday - with a photo of tubes

Day 2 Dom very doped on morphine today. Able to sleep for 40 mins at a time. This meant we were able to get some rest during the day. In the morning we had to hold Dominic down for a heel prick so he could get a blood count. Debbie’s mum came in to visit with lots of yummy food, which was awesome! Dom didn’t eat much at all during the day – a light breast-feed here and there. He was getting lots of IV fluids though. We spent a long, long day looking after the little guy, untangling his cables and getting nurses to clear error messages. Our stress levels dropped significantly though, as Dom wasn’t screaming in pain (even for the heel prick, where he cried but not as much as the terrible 5am patch). He’d cry when he woke up, and need settling with being sung to, stroked, breastfed or what-have-you. Prof Pringle visited, said Dom was doing well and that the chest drains may come out in the morning if there wasn’t too much fluid coming out overnight. Debbie had to use a breast pump as Dom’s crying but not eating was leading to some serious engorgement. Dom woke up groggily around 5pm, watched a little bit of a Winnie the Pooh DVD, then conked out again. He had some pamol but vomited, so had to have suppository pain relief. Debbie’s sister, her husband and Debbie’s mum popped in for a brief visit again in the evening, while Dom was sleeping. Night 2 A crazy night of Dom trying to sleep sitting up! From about 9pm onwards Dom refused to let his head tip down past about 45 degrees. He wanted to sleep in a kind of kneeling position, but was clearly neither awake nor asleep. Very stressful. We took turns climbing into the cot with Dom and trying to support him. From 11pm to midnight Dom slept in a stroller, with a million cables trailing in and bandages tied around the stroller to keep him in place. Dom got a little sleep but it was a pretty crazy night. About 5am he had a proper breast-feed, and seemed a little more settled. In all we each got about 4 hours sleep at varying times in the night which was a huge improvement on the night before! We also watched some QI on Debbie's laptop during the evening, middle of the night, whenever. The following photo shows most of the tubes and drips that were attached to Dom: The two big tubes on the left are the chest drains - stitched into his side, with thin tubes running a few centimetres up into his chest cavity. On his back is a local anaesthetic tube (paravertebral infusion) which is attached to the round thing with red tape on it. His right arm has an IV drip going in with morphine. His left arm is also bandaged as it has a spare IV line in it. Not shown are the less invasive but equally tangly oxygen saturation monitor (glowing red attachment clipped to his toe) and pulse/respiration stickers with wires attached, of which there were three on his chest/tummy.