End of Day Report

Well, we started out the day with pretty high hopes of getting Kim’s ventilator out. She’d been running a fever during the night, but by morning that was under control, her heart rate was down, and all her pressures looks fantastic. The doctors were actually giddy! So began the process of bringing her back off of the sedation so she could wake up, get that tube out, and start breathing on her own. Unfortunately every time the sedation would begin to wear off she would get very restless (almost certainly due to the discomfort of the tracheal tube), and her blood oxygen saturation levels would drop to levels too low to continue. So back to sleep, stabilize, and try again. We went through three cycles of this, and by the afternoon the staff was not quite so giddy as they had been.

The determination was that Kim is still holding on to too much fluid in her lung tissue, which is making breathing too strenuous. The remedy is to make her comfortable (i.e., back on the good stuff), hit her hard with more diuretics, and push through the night to try again in the morning.

I wish I had something thrilling to report, but I don’t want anyone to be discouraged. We may not have taken any big steps forward today, but certainly no steps back either. Kim is holding her own and then some.

Tomorrow we’ll get that ventilator out!!!