Slowly Weaning

The vent has been turned down to 18 breathes per minute and she is doing little breathes on her own.  Wonderful to see.  Her PEEP is still at 7 and her NO is still 4.8.  Her lungs are still yucky.  So what does that mean?  They are lowering the frequency that the machine breathes for her, but each breathe is still very supported.   The PEEP is still high to try and inflate the lungs with each breath.  They have stopped the lasix drip and she now gets that every 8 hours.

I have been picking Nurse Nick’s brain today.  I want to understand the relationship between right heart failure and pulmonary hypertensive crisis.  I have drawn pictures.  He has corrected my pictures.  He tells me things and I repeat it back in different words.  The man is going to be exhausted when he goes home!  Seriously, I should have taken anatomy in college.

Our girl is doing well.  She is awake most of the time now.  She naps here and there.  She has a low grade fever.  I want to give her a bath and do her hair so badly.  :)  I would love to hold her again.  I think fairly soon.  I think they might try volume support in the next day or two.  (What is that?  Volume support is when they tell the ventilator to be back-up rather than primary in the breathing department.  She gets to try out breathing, but if she doesn’t do enough then the machine kicks in and helps her out.  So it’s like training wheels for remembering how to breathe.  It’s a good thing.)   I’m so grateful they have decided to do the nasal cannula of NO, otherwise I’m not sure when we would ever get off this machine!