Day 268 - New Nurse & Trach Infection! 🦠🥵🤒🤧

Friday, September 24th, 2021

Our new (M, TH, F) nurse started today for day shift. Completely different personality from the nurse who does Tuesdays and Wednesdays but still seems more experienced than the first one we had. Of course there are always things that we need to let them know that we do differently. For example some nurses are trained to disconnect the circuit anytime for any reason whether it be to untangle something, clean out a piece of the tubing, or to empty water. For James he has a peep of 12 and if anyone is familiar with how the lungs recruit peep it is super important not to disconnect James unless it is absolutely necessary. We already have to disconnect James or what we call "pop him off" when we put his circuit through the crib railing to avoid him getting rain-out. This happens twice a day. We also disconnect him when we do a trach change which is once a week. Any other reason to disconnect the circuit is really just unnecessary. We all have peep, ours is around 5 and James is currently at 12. Again, below is a very simple explanation video of PEEP. 

Positive end expiratory pressure (PEEP), is a pressure applied by the ventilator at the end of each breath to ensure that the alveoli are not so prone to collapse. This 'recruits' the closed alveoli in the sick lung and improves oxygenation.

Results came back from the sputum culture done on Wednesday. We received a voicemail after the office was closed that James was being prescribed an Antibiotic. Later in the evening a doctor called us who was on call at the hospital to let us know that we needed to pick up the prescription. They reached out to our pulmonologist to ask him his opinion on giving James an antibiotic since eventually James will be immune to antibiotics and he said to administer it. Overall, the only symptom that he has is increased secretions. 

P.S. If you read the blog and are supporting James through his journey we would love you to participate in our video montage of everyone singing his lullaby. Please see the James Weston lullaby post for more details. ❤️

P.P.S. Thank you so much for the lullaby submissions so far! It's so exciting to have all of you be a part of something so special! 😭