Emily Gets Off of the Jet!

Emily had a surprisingly good day today. When we went into the hospital this morning, we she wasn’t in her usual spot. After a brief panic, we found that she had been moved to a small private room just off of the East Nursery. When we went in to see her, the nurse and respiratory therapist were working on her. She had just been relocated because she was so stable. Now for our second surprise; she was on the regular ventilator! The jet ventilator and nitric oxide machines were sitting to the side, turned off and Emily had very good O2 saturation levels. Apparently while she was being moved, she did really well with being hand bagged, so they just hooked her up to the regular ventilator while they got her settled. Then the respiratory therapist decided to hook up a monitor to the ventilator to check the pressure-volume curves. To her surprise, they showed nice big loops, and she got the doctor who decided to leave her on the regular ventilator until they took the next blood gas. She continued to tolerate the nurse and respiratory therapist suctioning her lungs, retaping her tube, changing her diaper, pricking her heel for a blood gas, feeding her, etc. all at once. Two blood gases taken this morning showed low CO2 levels. Emily was stable for us pretty much all day except for about an hour when they had her on her belly. She got extremely upset and her heart rate went up to 200 beats per minute and her saturation levels dropped. She also had a bad blood gas result, with a CO2 of 96. The next gas taken 90 minutes later when she was on her back showed a CO2 of 66. I just called the hospital, and it unfortunately went up again to 78. These blood CO2 levels seem to be the one thing confusing the doctors and respiratory therapists. Emily has been very active all day and all of her vitals signs are good, her oxygen saturation levels are high, and the respirator seems to be working well, but her CO2 levels seem to move wildly from very good to very bad within a few hours. The doctors have teaked the pressure settings on her ventilator, so we are hoping that there will be more good news tomorrow.