When we arrived in intensive care, we saw our little girl in the middle of the room with her two nurses Julie and Becca. Niamh had a bandage on her head and two drains coming out of each side of her brain. She was intubated through her mouth. The tape holding the tube took over most of her face. Her hands and feet had cannulas, she had a catheter to monitor her urine output. It was hard to find a free area of skin to kiss. Yet she looked beautiful and peaceful. She was connected to various machines.
The nurses were fantastic, they explained to us everything they were doing. As she was due to have a post op MRI the next day, they kept her sedated and under morphine till the Friday afternoon. Mr Kay showed us the results of the scan and whilst there was still a big mass, it was reassuring to see that it was no longer life threatening and that the fluid in her brain was able to pass. Mr Kay explained that we would need to be very patient with her progress, that she may not be able to move her limbs, or talk, etc. Time would tell.
They stopped the sedation and morphine on the Friday afternoon. By the evening she started slowly to open her eyes. Her blood counts and urine were all fine. In the middle of the night they decided that she was able to breathe on her own, it seemed quite a tricky judgment to make. They worry that if the child wakes up too much they may get very scared with the tube and so it is often best to take it off before they get stressed. Luckily it went well.
Niamh was looking around, it was hard to tell if she could recognise us, she looked scared and sad.
Her voice (when crying or saying no) was very faint to start with but gradually got back to normal. By Saturday morning she had showed slight movements in her four limbs which was very reassuring. Her right side, both leg and arm was much weaker.
By lunchtime, she was assessed fit to go back to Ward 10.
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