Here's to a Quiet Night

Well so far so good. Continuing to wean drugs down. She's now been off the Vasopressin for 30 minutes and has recovered nicely. Every change in meds has been met with her little body picking up the slack. 

No other changes planned for the night. 

Just letting her body sleep and heal.

Good night my sweet, see you tomorrow.

"Status quo, you know, that is Latin for the mess we're in." - Ronald Reagan

It's been a good day. mostly uneventful.  Slow weaning and tweaking of medications has left her with pressuresa of 89/38 with MAP 56.  Down some from earlier, but she's been reduced on two blood pressure meds and increased on a Vasodilator to improve her peripheral circulation. 

Rythms are good, Urine output is increasing, Chest drainage is normal. Heart no need for pacing machine. Hopefully this contibues through the night. As long as things continue to look stable we'll try to get a longer night's sleep than yesterday.

The plan is to try and close her chest Monday, as long as she continues to urinate well and get rid of her excess fluid.

Earlier Olivia woke up a little while Sara was with her, opened her eyes and was looking around. Our little Peanut Diva is still there, underneath/behind all the tubes and wires.

Keep up the good work Olivia, slow and steady wins the prize.

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.

Sleepless Nights

I have a feeling it's going to be along couple of days.  Overall she's been doing pretty well, she seems quite sensitive to any changes right now. Small changes in meds or fluids send her blood pressures moving from one extreme to the other.

She just had a pretty bad pressure crash after stopping one drip. They ended up asking us to leave while they worked on her. Not a fun 30 minutes. They had to bolus significant fluids and start an epinephrine drip. They also hooked her up to a pacing machine to make sure her Heart Rate doesn't drop below 100. The doctor did say they had to do some chest compressions to keep her pressures up while the meds kicked in. She stablized fairly well after that.

We're back in with her now and gave her a stern talking to about pulling anymore crap like that. She's stable again, but not giving us any rest.

Keep the positive thoughts coming our way.  While the surgery was a HUGE step, the next 24-48 hours are even more critical for her boby to start to adjust to the new blood flow and all the trauma the surgery induced.