Wednesday, February 10, 2010

Still Doing OK

Lynnea continues to do OK off from ECMO. Initially she spiked a fever of 101.1, but they managed to bring her temperature down with Tylenol and some ice packs. Even though it wasn't really unexpected for her to run a fever after coming off from ECMO blood and urine cultures were sent to the lab to check for infections, just to be safe. Now her temperature is 99.8, so it has come down some, and seems to be staying down. Her blood pressures have continued to fluctuate more than anyone really likes, this time dropping lower than they should (unlike earlier when they were a little too high), but this is most likely due to a fluid balance issue. Lynnea has been give lots of extra diuretics to help her flush out all of the extra fluids she received while on ECMO, and she may have gotten rid of more fluids than she really needed to, which causes a drop in blood pressure. So, she has been given some extra saline, and they have cut back on her diuretics to help balance things out. The plan for overnight is to try to wean her oxygen down a bit -- she's still on the ventilator, and while coming off ECMO, it was necessary to set the oxygen level at 100% in order to get her blood-oxygen saturation levels up to where they should be. Dr. St. Louis never wants Lynnea to stay on 100% oxygen any longer than absolutely necessary, so they have begun to wean her down a bit. She is currently on 80% oxygen, and her saturation levels are fine, but earlier when the nurse tried to turn it down to 70%, her saturations dropped a bit. Of course, this may have been due to the drop in her blood pressure that happened at the same time, but either way, they ended up turning her back up to 80%, and haven't tried to turn it down any more since then.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

She sure is one strong little angel God definately has a purpose for her. Please know our prayers and hearts are with you all. Keep posting. Smile Cory, Tina, Maureen,Peter,Ashlun and all you others Aunts and Uncles,She is a gift.

Bev and Joyce