Massimo’s breathing on Tuesday and Wednesday was still very laboured even though he was on CPAP. On Wednesday afternoon Mr Daya (ENT surgeon) did a flexible bronchoscopy which doesn’t require a general anaesthetic nor does it bother him too much whilst it is being done. The original idea had been to put in a longer tracheostomy tube as that would help keep his trachea open as the bronchoscopy showed that, as in October, his trachea was closing together while he was breathing and it required high pressures to keep it open. Mr Daya felt that a longer tube would probably be too long for him and end up irritating the biforcation of the lungs and remain inside one or other lung. We tried a shorter tube to see if, by being further away from the part of the trachea that collapses, it would give more room for the air to move. Unfortunately this worked for about half an hour and then the poor little chap started really struggling again.
When he started going a little blue around the edges, the doctors put his original size back in. By fiddling with the CPAP settings and giving Massimo a little sedation they finally got him quite settled yesterday. We even got a few smiles by the end of the day.
This afternoon when I went in to see him I got two surprises. The first was the most massive smile with lots of leg kicking and hand waving and the second was the news that Massimo was being transferred to CICU (Cardiac Intensive Care Unit) at Great Ormond Street within the hour! Massimo is now happily asleep awaiting a rigid bronchoscopy on Monday. Once that has happened they are going to try sneaking him into the MRI scanner (there is a 3 month waiting list and he does have an appointment for 29th January). Armed with one or two sets of information the tracheal team will then decide a plan of action in order to help him through this particular difficult moment and possibly avoid this happening again.
For now he is happy and settled and has a whole new audience to enthrall!