2003 Journal Links

If Archie doesn’t like something, he let’s everybody know. He gets that from his mother. Yesterday Archie didn’t like his ventilator tube. He disliked it so much that he managed to extubate himself twice during the day and once during the night. “Archie’s as strong as an ox,” Dr. Walker remarked. “But I like him feisty. I wouldn’t want it any other way.”

By correcting Archie’s electrolytes, Dr. Ohning was able to reduce Archie’s carbon dioxide level in his blood from a very high 95 percent to a very normal 40 percent. Consequently Dr. Walker was able to turn the baby’s ventilator down to 21 percent oxygen, or room air. Archie is tolerating the ventilator adjustments very well. So well, in fact, that the doctors hope to wean the little guy off the machine by the end of the week.

“If he can come off the ventilator by the end of the week, we won’t transport him to Charleston,” Dr. Horne explained. “We’ll give him the time he needs to gain as much weight as he can.”

“You’all need to thank this man here,” Dr. Horne continued, gesturing toward Dr. Ohning. “He’s done miraculous things for your son.”

In case he needs it, Dr. Horne is scheduling a surgery date for Archie at MUSC in two weeks time. “If he’s doing well, we’ll cancel. If not, we’ll transport.”

Today Archie is doing well. Really well, in fact. He looks fat and happy, and is his familiar charming self, a side of him we haven’t seen in a while. A blood culture revealed a staph infection, which doctors are currently treating with antibiotics. A urine culture revealed a urinary tract infection, which is also being treated with antibiotics. Both infections would have disqualified the baby from surgery this week, Dr. Horne explained. But neither infection seems to be keeping the little man down.

“It isn’t often that I get beat up by a baby,” Jill, one of Archie’s nurses, told John and me when she came to the waiting room to get us after she finished putting a new PICC line in Archie, this time in his scalp. “But Archie gave me a run for my money. And he managed to extubate himself again in the process.”

Jill had wrapped Archie up in a blanket as if it were a straight jacket after she finished inserting the new PICC line. Just the same, my little man was still able to free one tiny hand from the confines of the blanket, his fingers flirting again with the ventilator tube. Keith, Archie’s respiratory therapist, stood watchfully by. “I’m afraid he’s going to do it again,” he worried aloud.

Archie’s flirtation with mischief and Keith’s resulting vigilance continued all day Sunday until another close call forced the baby’s nurse to bind his arms with restraints tied to his crib slats. The little man lay in his bed, the Jack Nicholson of the infant’s version of “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” his wild hair standing up all over his head, trying to free his arms. His father and I stood by watching, proud as could be, trying not to stifle our giggles.

“There’s something very special about him,” Dava, Archie’s nurse, observed.

John and I couldn’t agree more.