Wednesday, April 11, 2012

changes

Yesterday, Henry had a rough day.  His CRP had jumped to 8.5.  This made his neonatologist think he had some sort of infection brewing.  This is because while we were on the antibiotics, his CRP was good, but a few days after the antibiotics were stopped it jumped.  Dang.  So, it was determined that he needed a sepsis workup.  This includes peripheral and central blood cultures, urine culture and urinalysis, and cerebrospinal fluid culture (retrieved through a spinal tap or lumbar puncture).  Dang again. 

Vancomycin and gentamicin, two of his original antibiotics were restarted. 

So, Hank was a sport and tolerated all that stuff really well.  Then, later in the afternoon, his oxygen saturation kept dropping.  Poor kid.  So, Hank got turned over onto his belly (this apparently helps with breathing) and his oxygen was increased from 5 liters to 6.  Yucky. 

on belly

Later, when discussed with the cardiothoracic surgeon, it was determined that he shouldn’t be on his belly.  Whoops.

His milrinone (the drug that increases the contractions of the heart) was turned off, with a cardiac ECHO scheduled for the next day.

Today when I went in, I was happy to hear that Hank’s CRP had dropped down to 4.7.  Maybe the antibiotics helped?  He was doing much better with his breathing as well.  There was discussion about starting him on CPAP instead of oxygen to give Hank more support with breathing and that was eventually done on Wednesday.  He seems to tolerate it well, but poor thing has practically his entire face covered.  He doesn’t like it at all, but it’s good for him. 

cpap

(Can you see him in there?)

A couple good things:

1.  FiO2 is in the low 30’s.

2.  Hank is tolerating feeds well and will be on full feeds in the next few days.  This means no more nutrition through his IV.  Goody. 

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