April
2008
Adventures in waiting0
I didn’t realize it had been three weeks since I updated here. Since Dorrie has been unsedated (she’s officially done with morphine and ativan as of early last week), the days I spend at the hospital have had approximately zero minutes of free time. Last week I didn’t even get out the computer when I was there by myself.
Her progress on weaning from respiratory support has been slow, but not horrible. As soon as she was no longer under the effects of sedation her need for a rate on the ventilator plummeted, as I knew it would. From there, though, things have been a bit slower. Right now, and for about the past two weeks, she’s been going back and forth between straight up CPAP of 8 and CPAP of 8 with pressure support of 8 and 3 ventilated breaths/minute thrown in for good measure. It’s not clear to us if the need for such a high PEEP is due to her being out of shape after her month of sedation/paralysis, due to the trach itself not being a ‘normal’ way to breathe, or due to general lung crappiness. Obviously the third problem contributes to everything in some fashion, but I’m hoping that the main problem is one, and as her muscles regain their strength, she’ll have less trouble.
For the past few days we’ve been doing CPAP for 12 hours and then going back to the rate of 3 for 12 hours. She seems to be tolerating this quite well, so hopefully they’ll be willing to try and go for all CPAP all the time some time next week, as long as her O2 stays as low as it has been. 35% may be high overall, but for Dorrie it is quite low, so we’re pleased with it.
On the agenda for next week is getting her switched over to the kind of ventilator/cpap apparatus we can take home with us, and for the ENT to come and try out some slightly longer trach tubes that he ordered for her.