Getting Better All the Time

We still aren't positive what was wrong with Amelia, but the working theory is that she got overloaded with fluid and that made it harder for her to breathe, causing some of her alveoli (sac like structures in the lungs) to deflate. The croupy cough she had could just be that she had a lot of secretions that she was trying to clear in her throat. She was especially frothy (bubbly spit coming up on her mouth) the last couple of days.

She was on 3 diuretics yesterday and she will continue to get all three for the next couple of days. As expected she had excellent urine output and hopefully this is drying her out and helping her breathe. We had Jacqui as our nurse yesterday and she thinks some of her alveoli popped open while we were there because she was able to wean her a little bit.

Overnight the nurse had been able to wean her down to 55% fiO2. She had been in the 70s and 80s all day and most of the day before. So we are seeing some progress. When they round today they will decide if she will stay on CPAP of 6 or if they can turn her back down to 5. Knowing how cautious our present doctor is, I can imagine she will probably leave her to get her down in the 40% range. Dr Khan did swing by yesterday to check on her even though he is not on her case right now. He didn't know about her setback. He didn't seem too concerned.

When I walked in yesterday for my visit, the eye doctor was just finishing up with Amelia's exam. She saw me coming in the door and said she looks great, everything looks good, don't want to see her again until she is a year old! Then Jacqui was getting out the dreaded board to measure Amelia. She tried to move her out of her bed. Her tubes are threaded through the rails of the bed and when she went to pull them apart, the connector broke. So Jacqui had to stand there will 2 pieces of tubing pushed together while another nurse called an respiration therapist to come and repair the connection.

They had Amelia jacked up to 100% oxygen to make sure she didn't desat. Absolutely no sense of urgency on the part of the nurse calling the RT or from the RTs themselves. One was on lunch break, another came in to borrow a can opener and couldn't be bothered to help, so a third was called who had to sashay to the supply closet to get the appropriate materials to repair the connector. Finally 20 minutes later it was repaired. I would hate to think how quickly they would move if a parent hadn't been standing there. Anyway, we decided to skip the measuring on the board until night time. (Eventually the night time nurse did measure her and it turns out the measurement from the previous week was accurate.)

Because of all her troubles they decided to skip PT yesterday. I think the PT lady (Shelly) is going to come back today. She told me she was mainly working with her arms and legs, helping her strengthen her neck and getting her to roll from her side to her back. Apparently she did this successfully a couple times last session. I am already missing out on milestones!

Even with all her diuretics the baby weighed 9 lbs. 1 oz. last night. Please pray that she continues to bounce back from whatever this was...we were so close to nasal cannula....