Lucas has spent the last 15 hours waking up about every 1.5 hours in writhing pain. This is followed by more pain meds and suctioning of his airway which brings him comfort.

At 2 am, Lucas’ ventilator had a “technical error” for exhalation. They had to switch to squeezing a bag manually to simulate what the machine was doing.  The whole event also coincided with his nurse being on lunch break and Lucas waking up, needing his pain meds, writhing, coughing, and gagging. Needless to say, it was a pretty stressful and scary experience, probably heightened due to a little lack of sleep on my part.

They did get a part switched out on the ventilator and they are now turning down the settings allowing Lucas to do more of the breathing on his own. They also just switched his sedation medication in preparation to wake him up. We are still very nervous how extubation will go with the combination of the esophageal stint and his tracheomalacia. They plan on attempting extubation this morning. Please pray this goes smoothly.

Nani at Lucas' bedside