Elephant Face Again

Yesterday, the doctors told us that they had been weaning Averi off the ventilator all night and the respiratory person would come in the afternoon to remove the tube.  Before they could take out the tube, the sedation medications had to be weaned as well.  This left Averi squirming in her bed all morning.

They finally extubated her around 3:00pm (later than scheduled).  After giving her a breathing treatment to open up her irritated airway, her oxygen still wasn't staying up on it's own.  They tried several different things and eventually put her back on the CPAP.  She was not at all happy about it and it took quite a while for her to calm down.

When she finally did calm down she would sleep for about 15 minutes and then wake up arching her back and flailing her arms and legs.  I asked the doctor if we could up her pain medication and he said she hadn't been on any pain meds since she came down to the PICU.  Seriously?  I quickly fixed that but it still didn't seem to help much.

At least they let me hold her since she was off the ventilator, and that seemed to help a little, but she still had moments of obvious discomfort.  Somehow, she once again managed to get her thumb in her mouth while maneuvering around that elephant nose on her face.  Thank goodness for that thumb (yes, I'm aware that will come back and bite me in the butt).

The wound care specialist also came by and looked at her G-tube site.  She said that it is cellulites and the site needs to be cleaned, have Proshield applied to it to keep any drainage off the skin, and covered with a special gauze that has silver in it which apparently helps with healing.  She was also put on yet another antibiotic to stop the infection at the G-tube site because it will also make her sick.

During the night last night the oxygen levels on the CPAP were weaned in hopes of getting it off today.  When I came in this morning the nurse was taking the CPAP off for a minute to weigh Averi.  The doctors came by doing rounds and saw that Averi was doing fine with the CPAP off and told us to leave it.  They never had to put it back on and she kept her oxygen saturation levels around 98 percent.  Yipee!

With all that breathing stuff off her face and the sedation medications worn off, Averi is a little bit more herself today.  Her eyes have lost their glossiness but she isn't really moving around or wanting to play.  They even started a continuous feed tonight, which is always a good sign.  Hopefully she will continue to get better.