Out of PICU (deja vu) [Updated]

It seems I've made a post called "Out of PICU" before. :)

Andy's stay in the PICU has come to an end. We're in 4307. We had a pretty rough night. Aside from the non-stop "beep beep beep beep beep beep" of the monitors, he was in pain a lot last night. Sleep for 30 minutes, wake for 30 minutes, sleep for 30 minutes, wake for 30 minutes, etc. Finally around 4:30 we were able to sleep for about 4 hours.

I forgot how in tune a parent can become with a kid under certain situations. At one point at around 3:00am or so, I told his nurse he's in pain. He wasn't showing many signs and she probably didn't realize it, but he was. She gave the knowing smile and started morphine. Doctors and nurses often ask the parents what they think and they never second guess the parents. If I say he's in pain, they go straight to pain meds with 100% trust in my judgement. Strange how that goes.

I'm not quite sure how to feel. I'm thrilled that the tumor is out, but I'm also scared. I'm afraid that if I get too happy about things that I'll get pimp slapped again. That's how things go. I guess I'll wait until this is 100% behind us before I get too happy.

So they took out almost half of Andy's liver and his gall bladder. You should see his belly, how small it is now. It's weird. It's also weird that his liver is functioning normally. It would continue to function normally down to 25%. Yeah, that means they could have removed 3/4 of his liver if necessary. Remember at the beginning when I said that if he has to have cancer, it's good that it's in his liver? This is why.

I'm exhausted. Andy's starting to get fussy. I'm gonna settle him down and take a nap.

4307. Dunno how long we'll be here.

Update: I forgot to mention that all the tubes are out. The two IVs in his ankle are out, the arterial line in his arm is out, the tube in his nose is out, and the catheter is out. He's getting fluids and morphine through his port. He's been running fevers, but they don't seem too concerned with it. They're giving him morphine and Tylenol. I would assume Benadryl will be added to the mix because he's starting to itch from the morphine.