Another Wash Out Done

Lynnea's bleeding remained fairly steady throughout the day, but increased a little again late this afternoon, and was leaking around the chest tube, so Dr. St. Louis decided to do another wash out of her chest. He also put a few more stitches in her aorta to hopefully slow the bleeding even more. This seemed to have helped -- her bleeding has slowed to around 75cc's per hour now, and her blood pressures remain pretty stable. Sometime tonight, the doctors might decide to put Lynnea on Heparin (a blood thinner) to make sure that she doesn't clot off her ECMO circuit, but Dr. St. Louis warned us that this will most likely cause her to bleed again. Even with the bleeding risk, he feels that it's probably going to be a necessary thing to do, and did not seem to be overly concerned about a little increased bleeding, as long as it doesn't get out of control. He is still planning on trying to take her off from ECMO tomorrow. He feels that her heart function still looks good, and is hopeful that her lungs will be able to handle things on their own. He has another case to do tomorrow morning, but he's hoping that it will be a short case, and he'll try taking Lynnea off ECMO sometime after that.