Big Day for the Big Cheese!

Hi All, Well its a big day for the "Big Cheese"! Colby is doing great. Jess and I sat in on rounds this morning and it looks like Colby will have his chest tube taken out (that was for draining fluids) and he will be extubated today also. So no more breathing tube! Over the night Colby has been doing his best Usain Bolt impression. They put him on "sprints" overnite. This is essentially where they have Colby breathe on his own for about an hour. He is still intubated but he is doing all the work and the ventilator is there to help him if he needs it. He ran a sprint around 9:30 p.m. and another late last night and received the olympic gold medal for both. Who knew Colby would already be an athlete at 7 days old. So they will do another sprint this afternoon and as long as he looks good from that, his respiratory numbers look good and his blood gas numbers look good they'll extubate him. So that is a big step. He still is holding a good amount of fluid around his lung area so they "tap" him today where they'll just remove that extra fluid with a needle. He'll also get his catheder out today too. So he'll be making some nice progress. He has been peeking his eyes open every once in while too but he's still pretty out of it. They have to continue to give him Morphine so he doesn't get too aggrevated and for pain control.

They do another really cool thing here called Hope Beads. Every child here gets a piece of colored twine with a dog tag that has their name painted on it and then the kids get beads for every procedure or event that they go through. They use the beads to document and honor the journey of each child and to tell their personal story. Every display of courage is acknowledged by a different color bead. Colby has about 20 beads right now. His beads are for: Life, Favorite Nurse, Breathing Treatment/Oxygen, PCTU (Pediatric CardioThoracic Unit), IV, Oral Med, Special People, NG Tube, Pokes, Radiology, Good Day, Hospital Admission, NPO, Chest Tube, Survival Flight, EKG, ECH, Heart Cath, Surgery, Pre-op screen, Urinary Cath, Dressing Change, Intubation, Blood Draw/Transfusion. It'll be something he can show his friends in the future and one more piece of this giant story that he'll someday get to tell.

Jess has been doing great, she's in great shape and loving her free meals that she gets here as she is a nursing mom. Today is a special day, they have Oreo Dream Bars for dessert in honor of Earth Day. Why you ask do they have Oreo bars in honor of Earth Day? That question may never be answered. My only thought is the Oreo bar looks like a chunk of dirt. :) The most ironic part of this little tidbit, for the promotion of the Oreo bar they have passed out paper flyers for the dream bar with the meals for the past 3 days. Something just doesn't seem right there! :)
But this has been one of our talking points lately, The dream bars are coming, the dream bars are coming, whoohoo! :) We'll let you know the full review on our Earth Day treats.

Point of interest, there is a teenager in the waiting room listening to his headphones so loud that we could here them across the hall!! I mean SO loud. Jess even said something to him about the fact that he MAY be hurting his eardrums to which he replied huh? oh, I'm fine and then I think turned them up louder. :)