So Long, Breathing Tube!

Well, today was quite the day. Stacy had gone to visit Luke after her meeting at school today around mid-afternoon. Luke was doing well and Stacy got to hold him once again. After a nice, long, good visit Stacy came home where I was still working. About 5 minutes after she got home, she received a call from Luke's nurse at the hospital who told us that right after Stacy left, Luke's ventilator started to show an alarm that indicated that air was leaking from inside or around the tube. Normally in this instance, they simply remove the breathing tube and then re-intibate it back in. However, as they were getting ready to do so, his one doctor decided to try a different path and simply leave the tube out and put him on a SiPap machine instead to see how he does on it. Low and behold, he took to it pretty well and has been doing quite well "sat-wise" and while his oxygen level is slightly higher than it was on the ventilator, it is normal to do so anytime you switch between machines.

So! Obviously we were very pleasently surprised! This means no annoying breathing tube down his throat anymore and he more or less does his own breathing with only a minimal back-up rate supplied by the SiPap as needed which is a much smaller puff of air rather than a breath. The nurses can still administer full manual breaths if he needs them, but this is a great step in the right direction. It also means that we may soon get to hear him make little sounds and cries as the tube is no longer there to block his vocal cords! Even still, we're keeping our excitement slightly tempered as we know there is always the chance he may regress a bit and need to go back on the ventilator at any time. Around 6:30, we both went back to see him with his new apparatus. As you can see in the picture, it's a little more menacing looking than the little breathing tube he had before, but we know that it's the best thing for him right now and a good step forward.

Shortly before we left, we assisted his nurse with giving him his bath, taking his temperature and changing his diaper (well, Stacy did the diaper). The best part was when his nurse took off the SiPap mask so she could clean his face a little bit and for the first time we got to see our boy's little face without anything covering it other than the small NG (feeding) tube. We didn't get to take too many pictures as it was only for a very quick moment, but it was very special to see our little boy's "big boy" face.