No more chest tubes!

Yaaaay! Just got back from removing Coley's chest tubes. He was such a champ. He screamed through the whole thing and sweat through his hospital pajamas, but they're out! He is SO SO SO much more comfortable. The next big thing is to keep him fed and hydrated and get him up and walking around. I haven't heard anything about going home, but it's possible it'll be tomorrow - he's doing so well!

This morning getting ready to take out his chest tubes was a bit of a fiasco... At about 8:30am, they came and told us not to let him eat or drink anything in preparation for doing it, saying they'd do it around 10:30. Finally at 11:30 I went to ask what was up. He was saying he was hungry for the first time since being here and he hadn't eaten anything since last night's dinner. They told me they'd do it at 2pm, and to try to get him to drink clear liquids for the next 15 minutes until noon. So we tried to get him to drink as much as possible, which he wasn't really into. At about 12:15, the RN came in and gave me the option of removing the tubes with only morphine or morphine plus versed (that's the medicine they needed him to have nothing by mouth for 2 hours before). Doing it with morphine only would mean doing it much sooner (not waiting until 2pm). Also afterwards he wouldn't be so out of it and could eat and drink and play. So that's what I opted for, and that's exactly what he's doing now!

More later...