Hospital: Tuesday #1- It's gotta get better

We had a very rough night. A's pain is not under control. In spite of his epidural, which is "delivering" the maximum amount of pain medication he can safely tolerate, he has severe spikes of pain roughly every two hours. He woke us throughout the night with piercing screams of pain. Erin and I took turns consoling him while his night nurse administered an extra boost of pain control at each of these intervals.

Thus far, we are expressly disappointed in how A's pain has been relatively neglected. The pain team has been contacted several times. After several contacts, they sent the resident up who looked at his epidural site and claimed it looked "normal". She said she's seen many with much more drainage than A's. Though that calmed us at the time, it soon became clear, as we entered the wee hours, that something was NOT normal.

This morning, the surgical team came in for rounds. They examined him and said he is looking good so far, though they didn't hear much in the way of bowel sounds (our first milestone). They were, again, made aware of A's pain situation and they agreed to contact the pain team themselves to discuss this problem. They also wrote for another medication that was explained to us like "Mot.rin". In addition, he does receive Ty.lenol by mouth every 6 hours.

Our nerves are rather rattled over here. We slept very little, taking turns working to console our little guy. The accommodations aren't exactly comfortable to begin with, but add in the stressful interuptions, and both of us are a bit on edge. He is now peacefully sleeping in Mutti's arms, and we've hit the 2 hour mark where the pain usually wakes A up, so perhaps some snuggles are helping. Soon, we're hoping to have a more effective plan for pain management in place. A deserves better than this.