Weird Day

So last night, Rowan got pretty irritated and wouldn't really calm down. His respitory rate, pulse, and blood pressure all got too high and weren't coming down very quickly, so they went ahead and set his respirator to make him take at least 8 breaths a minute that were a little deeper to keep him from breathing so fast, and he calmed down.

Later that morning, they realized that his IV had gone bad. Unfortunently, it was the one that was keeping him sedated so he'd be comfortable while he has a tube down each nostril and his trachea. Needless to say, he got REALLY MAD when they tried to put a new IV in. The IV team came to try to find a place to put a new one and had no luck. So they moved his sedation to his PICC line which isn't a big deal because he is no longer receiving IV nutrition - thanks to the fact that he is now tolerating feeds up to 22 mL an hour (we're almost to an ounce an hour!).

He may need another IV placed or even another PICC line, but that depends on how well he keeps this feeding going and whether or not the stupid chest tube fluid goes away.

The amount of fluid has been going steadily down, but it is still A LOT of fluid. Yesterday they had right under 300 mL of fluid from his tube, and from 7 AM to 3 PM today...had 27mL. Most people would think "WAHOO! It's going away!!!!" But we were pretty skeptical. Never trust progress in the ICU if it isn't painfully slow.

Sure enough, at about 4, they got whatever was clogging things up out of the tube and drained 87mL off of him. Needless to say, he looks more comfortable and we are looking at a similar output to yesterday now. Maybe a little lower.

Is this progression? Maybe. He's still putting off way to much fluid for extubation to be a possibility. We still have time for the steroids to work. Tomorrow morning is the "big rounds" for the week when all the doctors discuss plans for the rest of the week. We'll see what they think tomorrow.