Jayce in NICU
This was Jayce yesterday in the NICU, poor guy has so many lines in him...... One of my favorite things to hold is his big right toe (the foot w/out the blue wrap).
Here are all the technical details to date on him.
He has Pneumonia which is an inflammation of the lungs. It could either be caused by bacteria or by inhaling an irritant (like blood). So they have him on broad spectrum antibiotics for the bacterial possibility and if he inhaled something at birth (blood, amniotic fluid, mineral oil etc...) they are testing for it but it most likely needs to work itself out of his lungs.
The main vitals we are watching is %O2 into his lungs, O2 saturation in his blood, # of breaths assisted by the ventilator, then # of breaths he is doing above the ventilator set #, blood pressure and pulse. They do a blood gas sample @ every 4 hours to determine his progress. The goal is to get him on normal air (@21% O2) and breathing unassisted. So they will slowly bring down his O2 input % @ 5% an hour and watch the blood gas sample to make sure his CO2 levels and O2 saturation are OK. They brought him down to 75% yesterday but that didn't last long, he was back up to 100% by night time. So they will keep trying to push the envelope and see how far he can progress over the following days.
The # of assisted breaths (he is breathing on his own but this helps to give him fuller breaths) went from 30 Friday AM to 26 Friday noon (down is better!) then up to 34 Friday PM / Sat AM These changes were determined by the blood gas sample and % of CO2 in his blood. The higher the CO2 level the more assisted breaths they give his to help clear his blood, this means his lungs are not being as efficient as they should to scrub the CO2.
So it’s this balance between %O2 into him and # of breaths assisted that they are tweaking. It’s been the longest 67 hours of our lives.
Here are all the technical details to date on him.
He has Pneumonia which is an inflammation of the lungs. It could either be caused by bacteria or by inhaling an irritant (like blood). So they have him on broad spectrum antibiotics for the bacterial possibility and if he inhaled something at birth (blood, amniotic fluid, mineral oil etc...) they are testing for it but it most likely needs to work itself out of his lungs.
The main vitals we are watching is %O2 into his lungs, O2 saturation in his blood, # of breaths assisted by the ventilator, then # of breaths he is doing above the ventilator set #, blood pressure and pulse. They do a blood gas sample @ every 4 hours to determine his progress. The goal is to get him on normal air (@21% O2) and breathing unassisted. So they will slowly bring down his O2 input % @ 5% an hour and watch the blood gas sample to make sure his CO2 levels and O2 saturation are OK. They brought him down to 75% yesterday but that didn't last long, he was back up to 100% by night time. So they will keep trying to push the envelope and see how far he can progress over the following days.
The # of assisted breaths (he is breathing on his own but this helps to give him fuller breaths) went from 30 Friday AM to 26 Friday noon (down is better!) then up to 34 Friday PM / Sat AM These changes were determined by the blood gas sample and % of CO2 in his blood. The higher the CO2 level the more assisted breaths they give his to help clear his blood, this means his lungs are not being as efficient as they should to scrub the CO2.
So it’s this balance between %O2 into him and # of breaths assisted that they are tweaking. It’s been the longest 67 hours of our lives.
The biggest worry over the first 48 hours was PPHN (Persistent Pulmonary Hypertension Of The Newborn) (http://depts.washington.edu/nicuweb/NICU-WEB/pphn.stm) but the Docs feel good that he passed this and we just need to deal with the pneumonia.
I will take a pic of the monitor today so you can see the #'s and trend lines we are following along with updates.
K
posted by Baran/Narrow Family | 10:14 AM
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