Tuesday, Emily had a new “long line” installed. When that procedure was finished Tony noted that she didn’t seem to be responding to her enviroment like she normally does. After getting her doctor to look at her and checking her blood gases it was deterimined that she had high CO2 levels in her blood. So the tried giving her a new breathing tube figuring that it was clogged. It wasn’t. Her next blood gas showed that the levels were still on the rise. So this time they tried suctioning her using her tube as the suction device before giving her a new tube (normally they use a smaller tube inside her tube to do this). The doctor was able to get up some nice chunks of mucus but later she was still having problems. So another doctor decided to do this again! He too got more chunks of mucus up. After that she seemed to stablize. They checked the mucus and there seems to be no sign of infection so we are hopeful that this was just caused by her premature lungs and the inability to get these large chunks of mucus up her little suction tube.
Yesterday, Wednesday, the doctor put a new larger tube in her even though she was stable. He wanted to make sure he stays ahead of the problem. Also they can’t keep doing what they did on Tuesday. She has grown since she was born and there was definately air getting around the old tube. This has made suction a lot easier on the nurses and they are able to get up things now. They have also be able to improve her gasses and have her on around 40 % O2 as of yesterday. She has been much like her normal self since the CO2 levels are down. Yesterday she was kicking and moving about constantly!
Jennifer