Day 3

It has been a rough day for Payton; he has thrown up a couple times and had a little bit of a low grade fever. I know that he is not feeling well when he just doesn’t have a desire to eat. He only ate two little bites of mashed potatoes and maybe an ounce or so of Sprite and water. Payton had a chest X-ray again today and everything looked good. Savannah came to the hospital today for the first time and Payton was glad to see her. It was hard for Savannah to see her little brother feeling so lousy.

Our nurse said that if Payton doesn’t start sitting up that he could get pneumonia, so we sat him up and it hurt a lot. We had him sit up in a chair for an hour. He was exhausted after that and just wanted to sleep. We saw Dr. Miller this evening and I talked to him about what a rough surgery this has been on Payton and how he has been in a lot of pain. He said he isn’t surprised since this was such a major surgery with him having to go through his rib cage, with the large incision that he has, and needing a chest tube. The anesthesiologist decided to increase Payton’s epidural meds again since he is still in a lot of pain. Dr. Miller said that he might remove Payton’s chest tube tomorrow and possibly the epidural. By upping the epidural it is making Payton start to hallucinate a bit tonight and he seems even more irritable. We are hoping that Payton turns the corner soon and starts feeling better.

Both Dr. Miller and Dr. Bowman said the pathologist needed one more day so the results will be in tomorrow. It has been a long few days waiting. We are hoping that Payton starts feeling better soon.