December 22, 2016

The Day After Surgery

Yesterday started out pretty tough. He woke up in the middle of the night panting and unable to breathe easily. Some albuterol helped a little, but it seems that all the bleeding from his sinuses ended up in his lungs. At first, he sounded so bad, and was having such a hard time breathing, I was tempted to go ahead and bring him back to the hospital. We put in a lot of work yesterday, doing hand CPT every couple hours. It started out pretty rough. Coughing and laying down hurt his nasal area. Most of the day, he was coughing up a lot of old blood and mucus. Luckily, his nose wasn't bleeding much at all, so we were able to do his normal nebulizer medicines.

Because of those splints stitched inside to his septum, nasal rinses have been challenging, and painful. The doctor told us that if we didn't keep trying to do the rinses, the blood in his sinuses could scab over and dry and cause scarring. It took most of the day to use one bottle up, but it did flush a lot out.

He ate very little, so we did extra formula boluses to supplement the calories he wasn't eating. He felt nauseous after most boluses so he took it easy for most of the day.

Later on in the afternoon, the mucus he was coughing up was becoming less bloody, and more clear. He definitely was starting to feel more like himself. He slept sitting more upright last night, so while this is more comfortable for his head, all the drainage ends up in his lungs. So, we plan to continue with frequent hand CPT sessions for the next week.

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