Last night turned out to be a little on the rough side, Mimi and Daddy split the night hours again, and it sounds like about half the time she was sleeping and the other half she was a bit agitated. When I came in this morning, she was awake but not really herself, doing some sort of aimless movements and such, different from what we saw before that we thought was withdrawal. We removed her nasal O2 cannulas and her NG tube, not only whittling down the hardware, but also to see if it would help her settle to have less "junk" in her nose. They think she may be going through "ICU delirium" and have started her on risperdal to try to treat it. She showed this behavior for about 2 or 3 hours before she had finally worn herself out and fell asleep. Plus, along the way they gave her benadryl, and the risperdal should help with sleeping too. After she finally gave in, she slept for about 5 hours or so, and when she woke up it was like Emma Kate was back again! She was acting like herself, although weak and very hoarse, but she answered a few questions for me, which was wonderful. She got a new clonidine patch, her pacer wires were removed, and her central catheter was pulled. She's been doing great even without the oxygen, her O2 saturation is really good. Only a couple times today has she desaturated, and each time she comes right back up again. One time when I came back into the room, she was pushing herself up weakly from her stomach, I asked her if she wanted me to pick her up, and in her tiny little voice she said "yehsa" so I picked her up and we were able to sit in a big chair together. All her remaining lines and wires had to be rearranged, but she fell asleep very comfortably with her head on my shoulder- it was absolutely wonderful to cuddle my girl again! She went through one more awake period this evening and was fidgeting with her blankets and stuffed animals in her bed. She was starting to look a little bit shaky or agitated again, but she actually ended up settling back down after a bit and is sleeping peacefully right now.
The plan for now is to continue weaning her off her precedex- once that is stopped, she'll be off all IV drips, and will just have an occasional IV treatment, everything else will be orally administered. At some point they will decide when to start allowing her to eat some, and there has been some mention of doing a swallow study on her, but no one has discussed it with us yet. Her ENT doctor will be back tomorrow and I'm eager to see what he thinks of her- so far we're really quite surprised at how well she seems to be doing. She is still making noise when she breathes, and she does have the expiratory effort, but she's managed really well even when she has been agitated.
The sad part is that I'm now wearing a mask in her room- my nose has been feeling dry all day, and just tonight the feeling started to extend into the back of my throat... It could very well be all the dry indoor air we've been exposed to for a month now, but I'm worried it could be the beginning of a cold. Seeing how that's all it took to send her spiraling downward to begin with, I'm trying to be overly cautious about protecting her from any possible respiratory illness. That's exactly what she does *not* need right now.
Gretta continues to do well and have her fussy times too, she's a funny little one. It's amazing to me how different she can be from how Emma Kate was as a baby. We'll be calling in tomorrow to get an appointment for her one-month check up, and can't wait to see what her weight is. She has good times and bad with nursing for the last 2 weeks or so, but she certainly doesn't seem to be showing any signs of lacking nutrition, for sure!
No comments:
Post a Comment