Big Words

Cathy spent a little over 13 hours on the trach collar today. About 5 hours of that was spent sitting in the cardiac chair. Her pain has not subsided. They have hooked her up with a self-administering pain medication. She can press a button every 10 minutes and give herself a shot of morphine.

To lessen her pain, the plan for today was to remove one of the two drain tubes from her chest. However as this procedure was about to be performed, the nurse practitioner suspected that there was an air leak into her chest cavity. The investigation into this potential issue is still ongoing. Stay tuned.

This morning the attending physician from the pulmonology team said that Cathy's new lung has some atelectasis in the lower lobe. (Look at that, I got to use a BIG word). As the doctor told me, "This is just a term for a collapsed lung, it just doesn't sound as scary". This is probably being caused from Cathy's shallow breathing due to the pain. Having her sit up in the cardiac chair and taking full breaths should eventually correct this atelectasis (ooohhh, used it twice).