Another trying day

I sometimes wonder how much of what seems like a bad day has to do with when in the day we show up to visit. This morning, for example, I was there for rounds and the doctors and nurses were going over all of his charts and deciding that things looked pretty good and had a positive, upbeat demeanor. Meanwhile, even as they are saying this, the nurses were switching Woody's position and all kinds of alarms, beeps, and buzzes were going off and the nurses seemed like they were frantically trying to make sure that they were addressing each one in turn. I had the oddest time wondering whether I should believe the doctors in front of me or my senses to what was actually happening at that point in time. And yet even as all hell seemed to be breaking out with Woody, the doctors agreed to try to take him off the oscillator, cut his BP medicine (which was back on again), and agreed that his ductus was closed again. (Note: I don't know whether that is good or bad news.)

Similarly, when I arrived this evening, Woody's blood gases were doing poorly again and the team decided to switch him back onto the oscillator. So within five minutes of getting there, five nurses, two respiratory techs, and the on-call doctor were all crowded into the room paying attention to all the beeps and buzzes and alarms and his oxygen was up all the way to 100%. I was not happy with this turn of events, especially when one of the nurses told the doctor that the recent chest x-ray had come back with significantly more haze than before.

The doctor, who was just kind of watching the action, turned to me and asked if I was the dad. Yeah, I said, and I'm sure he could see that I was at least highly worried, if not actually freaking out.

"This means nothing."
But what about his bad x-ray?
"That just means he liked the other ventilator better. He just doesn't like the pressure ratios of the normal ventilator right now."
So the hazy x-ray doesn't mean any actual damage?
"Nope."
So what about the beeps and whirs and buzzes?
"We'll switch him to the oscillator, and he'll be stabilized within an hour on the same good blood oxygen as before, good blood gas numbers again, and we won't even really remember that this little incident happened."

As I write this, it's been an hour and a half, and he was just completely right about everything. Which makes me wonder, if I had gotten here now instead of when I did, I probably would have been none the wiser for something that the medical team didn't even consider to be that big of a deal.

I guess the conclusion is that if I had timed my visits better today I would have considered this a great day. My take as I sit here is that today was a bad, trying day. For me. And I'll take that, I guess.