1. Hannah was having some erratic breathing that scared the pants off me. I didn't scream for a nurse, but was pretty close. I've seen her struggle some to take a breath after being sedated, but this was different as she was just not really trying to take a breath. Evidently, this is not uncommon with a constant narcotic drip like what Hannah has had the past day. We stopped the low flow drip and are now only doing larger morphine doses, but we have been able to spread these out to 1 and even 2.5 hours apart today. This is so hard to do because of the fine line between wanting Hannah to be comfortable and able to rest vs. a constant stream of narcotics. Tomorrow should be better pain wise, so I'm hoping to continue this lower dosing.
2. We are REALLY hoping for a bowel movement tonight/tomorrow morning. When you are sedated, your bowels sort of shut down and they have to wake up before it's able to process anything. Unfortunately, there's no way to jump start this process, it just has to happen on its own. Right now, Hannah is shut down. If she doesn't start to rumble a bit, we are looking at having a PICC line placed tomorrow evening. This would mean being able to ditch the other two IV lines she's got, but for the negative trade of a line running through an arm vein directly to a large vein just outside of her heart. This would be able to provide enough nutrition to keep her going until her bowels wake up.
3. Dustin, Libby, and Charlie came to visit and my mom came with Eli this weekend:) It's nice to have some outside in after a few days of bad news in a compact room. Hannah recognizes her brother's voice. It melts my heart.
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