Wednesday, February 23, 2011

Wednesday February 23, 201

Well, we are four days into this journey and Tim and I are both exhausted. We have gone through a whirlwind of emotions and are doing our best to cope with the situation. We know that Ethan will be alright no matter what the outcome, and have to have faith that he is in the lords hands...he has a big plan for him. It has been such a comfort to receive so many e-mails and to know so many people are praying for Ethan to get better quickly. Thank you to everyone...you have lifted our spirits! It would be so easy for us to dwell on the "what if's" but that won't do us any good. I have a hard time sleeping because I can't get the image of Ethan screaming out of my head. It was so horrific. Tim says the same thing....I don't know how we will ever go back to our house, the image of it is forever engraved with us.

My parents have been with us for the past two days and stayed in the Ronald McDonald house last night while Tim and I stayed in the hospital room with Ethan. He was extremely irritable as a result of the side effects of the drugs he is taking, along with the catheter,g-tube and fevers he has had. He thrashed around in his bed, tearing off his bandages, rubbing his burns on his face until they bled, pulling out his oxygen, and kicked so hard he almost pulled out his catheter several times. He did this from 11 pm until 8:30 am. Yep, Tim and I pulled an all nighter, standing on either side of his bed; Tim held his legs down while I held his hips still from turning over and hurting his bandaged arms. We literally stood holding him all night long,no chairs. My legs ached and i started to get a headache from all of Ethan's screaming. His throat was so hoarse, especially since he had a feeding tube down his throat and had a breathing tube earlier in the week when they put him under for his dressing changes. We joked because we would settle him slightly for two minutes and so tim would go sit down and as soon as his bum would touch the bed Ethan would scream. Ethan was miserable and he never slowed down. We found out that in the morning his morphine wasn' t working all evening so they changed the pump and set that up. Then they pulled out his feeding tube and
ethan completely quit his screaming and calmed right down. That lasted for about an hour and then he started up again so we waited to see the pain team first thing in the morning. they came in and upped his morphine patient control. Tim and I were tired and very stressed because we kept telling the nurses and evening pediatricians that something is wrong and they would do nothing. Once the new morphine kicked in he relaxed a bit. The life saver of the day was the stuffed puppy he got from some dear friends of ours. He would not let that thing go and as long as he had it he was peaceful. We did however get to remove the feeding tube, the catheter due to a bacterial infection he has, and two iv sites that weren't working anymore.
My brother Dale and his wife Becky and their daughter came to the hospital and helped out lots. They made sure I got a break and they brought us the best Chinese dinner, so we were spoiled rotten. Ethan will go in to get his dressings changed tomorrow at 1:30pm so we should know more then. His last dressing change was not as good as we hoped and his entire scalp had to be removed because it was burned so deep, so now we just hope that tomorrow things will look better.