Hospital Time

Due to communication deficits here at the hospital, Lynnea will not be going home today, but hopefully she will make it home tomorrow morning. The C-T scan that was supposed to happen first thing this morning (yesterday we were told that it was scheduled for 7:15am) didn't happen until 10:45am. During morning rounds, I asked whether or not anyone had ordered, or was going to order, a lung profusion scan, and everyone just kind of looked at me like they've never heard of such a thing, then after some discussion, Dr. Kochillas (attending cardiologist this week) said that he thought it would be a good idea to do one while she is still sedated (and intubated...and for the record, keeping her sedated gets harder by the minute). Well, even though Dr. Kochillas thought she should have a lung profusion scan, no one ever bothered to put an order in for it. So, after her C-T scan, I asked again when she was going to have her lung profusion scan, and was told that "one wasn't ordered, so they must have decided she doesn't need it." After demanding that they double check this with cardiology (and, if they said they didn't want one, I wanted a specific reason for not doing it) an order was placed, but the soonest that she could get one was 3:00pm (again, keep in mind that she during this entire time she is still intubated and sedated, with so much sedation on board that her blood pressures started dropping -- for a while they were sitting as low as 50's over 20's). Lynnea didn't actually leave to go for her scan until 3:30pm, again due to some communication issues. Hopefully as soon as she gets back from her scan, they will allow her to wake up and then promptly extubate her. Because it is so late in the day, they want to hold her in the PICU overnight to make sure she does fine after they take her off the ventilator. They also need to re-start her feedings to make sure she is tolerating them. The good news for the day is that her temperature has returned to normal and has remained normal all day.