Upset stomachs, albumen replacement

Riley's stomach problems seem to be a daily battle. He has been vomiting regularly and is gagging frequently. He probably would be throwing up more often if he was taking more fluid in. He has yet to eat anything solid, even though he said he was hungry today. Still, even though he feels yucky, he is communicative. We keep waiting for him to shut down completely like he did last year. He refused to look at us or talk to us for a couple of days and it was horrible. So far, so good. Still no smiles, but that's OK.

There is still quite a bit of fluid coming out of his chest drains (he has three). Most seems to be coming from the left chest tube, which is the side that he has had that lingering fluid problem over the past year. For all three tubes, there has been about 500 milliliters of output since midnight. With all the drainage, his albumen level continues to sink, so he is now getting replacements. He is getting 50 percent replacements. So for every 10 milliliters of output, they will give him five milliliters of albumen. One of the pediatric cardiologists told me that they are looking for a combined output of 60 milliliters or less in a 24-hour period before considering moving him to the step-down unit. Everyone seems to have a different opinion on what needs to happen before moving him over there.

The arterial line in his underarm was removed this morning; the line in his jugular was removed yesterday evening. I'm sure he is more comfortable without them, but the tape removal process is very stressful for him. This leaves his PICC line in his groin as the only IV port.

His resting heart rate seems a bit higher than it was before surgery. While he sleeps, it is hovering in the low 120s. Before surgery it was around 108. This seems to be true for his heart rate while he is awake as well as it touches the mid 130s. I'm not sure if there is any significance--just an observation.

Riley got to get into the wagon today. It took nearly 45 minutes to load him up, and get all of his medicine drips onto mobile ports. We did not get to go far, but it was nice to get him out of bed long enough for them to change his sheets.

And now a bit of venting: When Riley was in surgery, someone ripped down all of Riley artwork from the walls of his room and carelessly loaded up all of our personal belongings into a wagon. We have been living in that room for nearly three weeks and there was a significant amount of stuff to be packed up. We offered to do this, but we were told that we could just leave everything there. I mostly feel violated as someone was touching all of our stuff and angry because someone didn't have the decency to gently remove Riley's pictures and posters and get-well cards. Now they sit damaged, completely taped together in a giant mound, and stuffed into some kind of paper bag.

Finally, I don't understand why people cannot manage to urinate in the toilets here at UCSF. Every public toilet is constantly splattered with a mess. I have been using public toilets my entire life and I continue to be amazed (and disgusted) by the state of the public bathrooms here. What is wrong with the people using these bathrooms? It just boggles the mind.