drawing 4s

J.J. has had an excrutiatingly itchy chest, partly from the incision but he also has a rash from the tapes that were used over the incision. We have some ointment now so hopefully that will help. To distract him I forced him to ride in his wheelchair to the playroom. He didn't want to go, and at first he insisted on being really grumpy. Jackie was being really silly and J.J. was trying really hard not to laugh at him. He did laugh despite himself a few times though. Once we got to the other playroom and started to draw he got really engaged. He sat forward in his chair for about an hour, drawing and was loving drawing nuumbers. He was extremely proud of his 4s and smiled every time he drew one.

At one point the surgical fellow came by and we had to come back to the room to get his chest tube taken out. That's one less thing to drag around. He does have a little fluid in his chest but they aren't going to rely on the chest tube to drain it out. He seems to be retaining fluid, he weighs 1.5 kg more than he did when he was admitted. We're keeping track of the fluids that go in and out and going to increase his Lasix.

They tested the contents of the chest drainage tube and they don't think it's lymphatic fluid from the thoracic duct. That's good because he would need to be fat-restricted and he's asked for pizza for the 4th day in a row!

Pretty soon they'll be starting J.J. on ASA and he'll probably stay on that permanently. They stopped giving him all of that Magnesium and he's getting the Ca/Mg/D supplement that he used to get at home because his Calcium is low. Unfortunately he needed a regular poke for blood this morning and a finger poke too. At least they won't test his blood again until Friday.

The 02 saturation monitor was beeping non-stop all night like an alarm clock so neither Billy nor J.J. got much sleep all night. Then they came in to take his blood at 6 which surprised me because I thought they wouldn't do it until I was in at around 7:30. I'm super exhausted right now. I could probably fall asleep right now if I closed my eyes.

J.J. had a couple of rides down to radiology today to get his chest xrayed. He really didn't want to do it. So he's had a lot of icky hospital experiences today that were no fun. For the most part he's pretty grumpy and tired, but today I caught a few glimpses of happy J.J. a few times. He was even joking around and being a bit mischeivous when we were drawing. He just fell asleep for a nap. That should do him good, hopefully he gets a good sleep tonight!