I’m going to begin todays entry with something dated for the 21st:
Now given that there is no such thing as “Easter Tuesday” but there is an “Easter Monday” I am willing to bet that the above entry was written by the night nurse on the 20th-21st.
Oscar was feeling a bit more like his cheeky self today, and that meant we had to keep a close eye on him as he played with some of his wires:
(The bruise is from where his heparin line was.)
That face is his “I’m not doing anything I shouldn’t, honestly” face. Notice that the tape holding his NG tube in is loose again! If i remember correctly today was the day he tried eating that (tape not tube.)
Remember I call his right hand “Oscar hand?” Well, Oscar’s left arm and hand he was holding at an odd angle now. He had this x-rayed for injury, but none was found. It was suspected that it was just as a result of the lines he had in his arm/hand at various times.
It looked like this:
I called his left hand “Chicken hand.” It’s strange the things you start to come up after spending days in the PICU. I think a combination of stress, sleeplessness, fear and uncertainty mean that things like comparing your sick baby’s arm to a chicken wing seem perfectly acceptable.
Note that he is playing with another wire in the above photo, and also below:
Yes, the NG tube was completely out-of-place here. Before every use its position was checked, so nothing would have been given to him down the tube in that position.
Today we also took more pictures with his duck comforter on his head:
He also ended up with a blanket on his head:
Which, of course he didn’t object to at all, because it wasn’t a hat!
You may notice in the above pictures how close his soft toys are to him. They served a couple of purposes. The first was to stop the tubes and wires around him from touching his skin (he bruised and marked easily) and the second was to give him something to grab at that wasn’t those same tubes and wires. For their first purpose they worked well. For their second…well you’ve seen the evidence of their lack of success with that!
And if you think it was just the crazy parents arranging the toys, his nurse overnight took this photo:
Something we were told several times by the nurses was how nosy Oscar was. He especially liked the middle of the night to wake up and have a nose around.
Oscar's Story 