It's All About Blood Pressure

Well Olivia didn't have any more complete crashes after her episode last night. Watching the nurse fill out a Cardiac Arrest Record for her was just bizzare. The good thing was that she never fully arrested, it was just that her BP and HR kept dropping to the point chest compressions were necessary to keep things circulating well. 

Through the night she had a couple more dips in BP resulting in two more IV medication drips and a Rythm Pacing Machine.  Since they started the Vasopressin at 4AM she's been extremely stable around 95/40 with a MAP of 60. The goal for Olivia is to keep her MAP (Mean Arterial Pressure above 45). 

The last 6 hours have been very good. They have turned down the Heart Pacemaker so she is actually keeping her own rythm. They have also started to wean her off the Vasopressin drip. So far she's keeping things up on her own. 

While she's still on the ventilator, she's now taking a breath on her own every minute or two. 

The next big task of the day for the little Peanut is to get her kidney function back to where it was before surgery. Her Creatinine was 0.5 before surgery, now it has jumped to 0.9.  They've given her a couple of diuretics to try and get some better kidney output. Most likely the Creat will continue to go up for another 24 hours before it levels out, and then hopefully goes down.

Olivia earned a new nickname from the staff last night : DIVA.  She didn't want to share any of the attention with any of the other patients, it was all about her last night. Oh Boy....

Hopefully it will be an uneventful day, slowly weaning IV drips (12 different ones at last count) and getting her to pee. The Dr's are thinking of closing her chest Sunday or Monday depending on how much fluid they get out of her system.

More later as things progress.

In lieu of a picture of her all wired up, here's a pic from 1 week ago. Man... I just want to be able to cuddle her again.