Kiran continues recovery on his terms. He did need three doses of Ativan over the course of yesterday/overnight. The nurse practitioner (who has been consistent this whole time and we love her) recommended he be put on enteral (through g-tube rather than IV) Ativan on a regular interval. He is getting some every 6 hours, and we should be able to wean it fairly aggressively. We will continue to follow his cues on this. 

Withdrawal is very hard. I don’t even have the emotional energy to write about the emotional experience. 

His arterial blood line came out this morning, so he is down to the basics. We are technically “stepped down” but they don’t have any beds available on the floor so we remain in our spot in the ICU.  We got the okay to start going back to his normal home feeding regimen, so he was able to try a bottle orally this morning. He only took 10 ml because he was still in a pretty fussy period. He is sleeping through his feeding time now, so we are just pumping his bottle in. I am not concerned about this – the feeding will not keep us in the hospital because he has the g-tube and we can continue our work on this at home. 

The doctor mentioned again if things continue to go well, we may be looking at being discharged later this week.  I thought I would be nervous – prior to this whole experience, the thought of being discharged before 2 weeks post-op terrified me – but watching him do so well throughout the entire recovery process, mixed with how much it sucks trying to live in the hospital, makes me very ready to get home and get on with things. 

We go for his lung perfusion scan at 3:30 this afternoon. They are looking for how much blood flow is going to each lung. Hoping everything looks good. His echo yesterday looked great, and he really is rocking his recovery!!!