Still Recovering...

It has been two weeks today since Ethan had his Shilla rods put in.  Recovery has taken longer than anticipated.  He was in the critical care unit four nights and then came up to the regular floor.  Pain management continued to be an issue, but has mostly subsided now.  The only time he really seems to be in pain is when he is in his wheelchair.  That is also what is keeping us in hospital right now.  Before we can be discharged he needs to tolerate being in his wheelchair. 

Four days ago Clayton started to put the hospital bed into a chair kind of pose.  Despite some grunting, it seemed to go pretty well and he has since tolerated it really well. 

 

If we try to put him in his wheelchair though, he starts to scream, pushes away his iPad or any distraction items, cries and even started to get sick to his tummy. :(  We have found that if we keep it really reclined then he seems to do alright in the wheelchair.  It is going to be our aim to get him used to that and eventually move it more upright as he tolerates.  We still need to work on the positioning of the supports in his chair as they are not quite right and he looks really uncomfortable. 

 

 

The above photo was taken a week ago, and if you look closely you can see a couple of the scars from the pins that held his halo in place.  The sites are still continuing to heal and some of the scabs have started to fall off.

His chest sounds great (so I've been told repeatedly), his oxygen saturations have been good, his IV is out, as are his stitches and tomorrow they're hoping to remove the staples from his surgery.  He only had 10 stitches, which looked really clean when they came out.  He was really upset when they took them out, but I think a lot of it was being forced onto his side as they cut them out.

 

 

During his time in critical he ended up testing positive for MRSA and we are still trying to find out what his C. difficile status is...he has had three negatives, but the last showed him negative for the toxin but positive for the antigen.  I don't feel we've had a satisfactory response as to what that means.  Hopefully we'll get answers soon...