Another Echocardiogram

I apologize for not updating the blog yesterday -- I was having difficulties logging in to Blogger. Anyway, Lynnea's day yesterday was not quite as difficult to the days prior. Her sedation was better, and her mood when she was awake was a little bit better. Yesterday they decided to stop her Zyprexa (the anti-psychotic medication she was on) because there is a very small chance that it could be contributing to her fevers. Today her fevers continued to be high, but it takes about 48 hours for Zyprexa to leave her system, so if it is a contributing factor, it would be too soon to notice any difference. This morning in rounds everyone agreed that it would be a good idea to do another echocardiogram since she is completely off from her Epinephrine drip (since yesterday evening) to see what her heart function looks like now that she's off from the Epi. I didn't get the full detailed results, but I was told that her tricuspid valve regurgitation is worse than it was before. Essentially, this means her heart function is worse than it was a week or two ago when they did her last echo. This is also the most likely reason that she is not tolerating her feeds (she's on primarily IV nutrition for the time being, though they are running her J-tube feeds at 6 mL's per hour). We still don't have any real plan for what will be done to address the issue of her heart failure, but this is at least partially due to Dr. St. Louis being out of town; I think he's supposed to be back on Tuesday, so everyone will discuss her situation then hopefully.