Missing Gabe

I'm sad today.

It's been a rough morning.  Lots of throwing up and forcing meds and other generally unpleasant things.  We've changed bed sheets more times then I can count and Gabe won't even look at us.  I was prepared for a stressful surgery, an emotional time in ICU.  What I wasn't prepared for was this.

Watching Gabe retreat into himself.

A few times a day he will give us a tiny smirk, maybe a few words.  Quite the change from our usual spunky, sassy guy.  I didn't fully realize how much I love his munchkin voice or his big toothy grin until I hadn't heard or seen them for 72 hours.

I wished I'd spent more time memorizing his smile Friday morning.  Oh, he is such a silly boy.

Last night, Gabe was restless. 

He'd sleep in 60 minute intervals.  Waking up with each new round of meds.  He laid in the bed, awake but content most of the night.  He had his first round of oral meds around 5 AM and immediately threw them up.

Que bed change number one.

He had to have labs at 5:30 and went down to radiology for his daily chest X-ray.

We took him on a long wagon ride around the hospital and he seemed to like it.  It's hard to tell since he just sits there frowning, but when we asked if he was ready to go back he said no each time.

Once we were back in the room, he just couldn't get comfortable. Every med he got, and he's getting a lot, made him immediately throw up.  Of course he caught on to the correlation between the two and started refusing to open his mouth to take them.

We weren't sure what to do.  I mean, he needs the meds.  So we forced his mouth open a made him take them.  It was awful.  After doing that for 2 rounds of med and him throwing them up the second he swallowed them, we were decided that was obviously not helping.  It was frustrating because the nurses kept saying it was probably the taste.  But I know that wasn't it.  He would take them but the second it hit his stomach, his body rejected them.

It was so sad and he was very mad at us and I don't blame him one little bit.

We finally got the doctor to come talk to us and she said that it was likely a mix of the intense pain and discomfort of the chest tubes, the pain med cocktail, and the anesthesia still working it's way out of his system.  She put as many meds as possible on IV to give his stomach a chance to rest.

As if that wasn't enough, they also decided to split his chest tube.  

At first he had two tubes coming out of his chest that connected into one big tube that lead to one collection box.  Since one side seemed to not be draining anymore, they split each tube into it's own box so that we could measure what each tube was draining.  Splitting them didn't actually hurt him at all, but it was just another uncomfortable thing to have to go through.  If the one that seems to be done is in fact done, they will pull that one tomorrow.

Which is exactly what they will do, pull it out.  So as much as I'm glad to be down one more foreign object, I'm not looking forward to the actual process.

The nurses doing the split kept commenting on how patient and polite he was.

Normally I'd be so proud to hear that about our boy, but watching him I knew that he wasn't being polite or patient.  He was just trying his hardest to be somewhere else.  I sat in the chair and cried the whole time.  Trying my hardest to not let Gabe see but to still be there to comfort him through it.  It's awful and I'm missing my baby.

We did get a few happier moments this morning.

He stood and took 10 steps without crying.  He ignored his breakfast with Superman.  There was a popsicle.

I know his personality is still there.  

Just hiding.  It's how he is coping to deal with all this scary stuff.  He's being so brave and I am so very proud of him.  It's all just hard to watch.

I'm ready to be his very best friend again.