Day 117 - Shorter but More Frequent

Monday, April 26th, 2021

Changes today:
After a 1am weigh in last night at 3840 grams, losing an ounce. He ended up gaining tonight at 3940 grams (8lb 10oz). He measured at 17.5 inches long. We have made some vent setting changes by decreasing the Rate from 30 to 25. The reason for this is because his blood gases recently were good.

Also we may not have mentioned but a couple of days ago we switched James from morphine to methadone. In a few days, we will begin weaning him off.

We did trach care at 1am along with weighing him and changing his clothes.

This morning around 9am we needed to draw blood for a CBC panel and for the exome sequencing test. They tried drawing it from an artery in his left arm and that was horrible to watch. Eventually they got someone who was really good at IVs to come in and take it from his head. We knew eventually they'd use those veins, so that is a bandaid on his head.

We did the trach tie change right after his 4:30pm episode.

Charting of BPD episodes

*All episodes (or spells) had bradys and desats, but these are not picking up in the history log. They will show on the monitor while it's happening but it will not actually log it in the history..?! These bradys were a few minutes long and the nurse's phone was not alerting her. The nurse also turned up the volume for the alarms on the monitor. She is concerned the monitor is not working properly. Mom will be letting the Doctor know that as well.

3/25 11:00pm - Happened during rounds, so everyone was in a meeting. Took a while for him to recover since Mom handled on her own and was not allowed to increase the PEEP. No one noticed the monitor.

3:50am - Happened while he was asleep. Mom woke up to him bradying in the 70's. Quickly changed his diaper and in the middle of that he had a large bowel movement. Increasing his PEEP to 14 also really helped end the episode and calm his lung spasm. This is the first time we noticed he was half asleep during the spell. Imagine having an asthma attack in your sleep.

4:30am - Trying to pass gas. We gave him gas drops and swaddled him tight so that his legs were held up.

5:50am - Sweating pretty bad. Finally passed some gas. 

8:00am - Another episode to welcome Day Shift. Speaking of today we have one of the nurses we really like!

4:30pm - Slept pretty much all day and woke up to a wet diaper which caused the episode.

6:45pm - Again, James knew it was shift change and wanted to welcome the Night Shift.

11:30pm - Happened because he woke up and had a wet diaper.

12:30am - Happened again because he woke up and had a wet diaper.

12:50am - Continued to Brady

3:15am - Mom woke to his cry (which you can hear around the trach). She looked outside the door to see that everyone was just watching him brady and desat. Not sure what they were waiting for...? He woke to another wet diaper.

4am - Dirty Diaper, no brady just desat. Again just sitting outside the door watching Mom handle a screaming BPD baby. Can't wait until we go home.

6:30am - Wet diaper, no brady just desat.