heading home...maybe

A few hours ago Chris and I met with the doctors and nurse practitioners on Kai's team...they are so impressed with how he has been doing lately. The drainage in his chest tubes has decreased significantly in the past 3 days. That is music to our ears! Why? Because that means we are looking at the possibility of getting those pesky chest tubes taken out!

A few people have asked us what chest tubes are exactly. For those of you unfamiliar with what chest tubes are, they are tubes placed in the pleural space (the area between the lung and chest wall). A small incision is made under a rib into the area between the lung and its lining, where the tube will be placed. The tubes are then hooked up to a suction device to drain fluid and blood. Kai also had a mediastinal chest tube which has already been removed. Feel free to scroll past the picture, if you're not interested in looking at it!

Right now, Kai is scheduled to be sedated tomorrow morning and then have these removed around 10:00 am. Aside from being much more comfortable, removing the chest tubes means that we are one step closer to being able to go home! If all goes as planned, Kai will be able to head home this week! 

Here's how he feels about that (please disregard his hair!)...

Of course, he has to keep us on our toes, so shortly after the decision was made to take these out, he began vomiting..all over...and "dumped" a significant amount of fluid from his chest tube. He just had bloodwork done. I'm not posting the picture I took of him afterward, but you can be sure that he does not look at happy as the one above and he's definitely not giving a "thumbs up"! 

We are all hopeful that this won't change the current plan. As much as we love everyone here, we are all ready to be at home. And get some sleep. We're all ready to get some sleep. Please pray that all goes according to plan and his testing over the next couple of days is favorable so that we can look forward to discharge this week!