Monday morning

The rest of Sunday was relatively uneventful- her ventilator settings stayed the same, since she is relatively close to extubatable settings. She's weaning down off her fentanyl and versed well and seems to tolerate little episodes of being slightly more awake, then she settles back down nicely. We're not seeing much of the agitation that we saw the first day, thank goodness. Her urine output continues to be in a good range, and we've not seen any edema returning. She has had a few little wheezes off and on, and Greg's gotten really good about getting the RT to lavage and suction the tube before jumping to an albuterol treatment- most times the lavage resolves the wheeze and she gets back to sounding really good without the medication. (The albuterol really makes her heart race for a long time afterwards.) Emma Kate has had a couple of alert periods today and even opened her eyes a little bit! Just recently she actually tracked Greg back and forth, which we're glad to see her doing- it's a good sign neurologically speaking.

For today, (it's day 22, can you believe it??) we're doing much of the same, continuing to wean down her massive drips, and we're expecting another consult with ENT to decide when to scope again and when they think it's going to be appropriate to attempt extubating her. Once we know that, we'll know when to try her on the support mode on the ventilator, where she is essentially breathing on her own (the vent doesn't do any mandatory breaths), but the machine gives her pressure/volume support to eliminate the sensation that she's breathing through a straw. They're considering another attempt at placing a PICC line so they can pull the IJ catheter, rather than doing the surgically placed catheter, since she won't necessarily need really long term access at home. Hopefully we'll have better luck this time since she's not swollen any more. Once we have her scoped and we have a better idea of her stability, they'll decide an approximate time to extubate her and that will also determine whether or not we go for the PICC line. We're anxious to see what they find, as it will likely give us a better idea of what road we're going to be heading down next.

Gretta is doing well, growing like crazy. She's fitting into 3mo clothes even though she's not quite a month old yet. We had to do a little shopping trip for her yesterday since she's outgrown nearly all the clothes we had down here for her! She's still a little fussy through the day but doing great at night (thank goodness!!!!). She is loving some nakey time right now and is staring down a little Elmo toy.