They spent probably a half-hour beforehand outside her room going over their plan, and all the backup plans for various possible outcomes. When they first pulled the breathing tube out her heart rate plunged...which is a terrifying thing to watch. Crazy how used to staring at monitors we've become to tell how Lily is doing. Anyway, thankfully it quickly spiked back up. It was a tense hour or so after that. I couldn't really tell everything that was going on, but it didn't go "perfectly". They said at first that she wasn't out of the woods for having to be re-intubated, but that they were comfortable continuing to try and make it work. They put her on a CPAP and went to work getting her breathing well on her own.
Pretty much the rest of the day was spent patting Lily's chest and suctioning out her oral secretions. Trying to get her to cough up all the crud that's been accumulating in her lungs while she's been sedated, paralyzed, and intubated. Big shout out to our nurse today, because Lil kept her on her toes all day long.
They also pulled out the arterial line from her right hand today. That was nice because having that in necessitated having a splint board to keep her from bending her wrist. So now she has both hands again, and one less line going into her. Tomorrow morning they're planning to take her peripheral nerve catheter out.
When I left at the end of the day she was resting, but pretty easily agitated. We think it's a mixture of being exhausted from all the work she put in today, just being generally sick of being messed with, and probably some withdrawal from all the narcotics she's been swimming in for the last three weeks. They'll keep her on the CPAP and just monitor how she's doing. We don't really know how long she'll need that, it just depends on how she's doing. Hopefully, she can channel her feistyness and be breathing strong and on her own tomorrow! We'll see. Also, they'll continue weaning back on her morphine and dex as she can tolerate it.
-Joe
Didn't get a picture of her after extubation, so all you get for now is this snarky side-eye :)
Haha that side eye she knows whose boss! So glad she had an overall successful day and seems to be going down the right and strong path! She’s such an amazing little fighter!
ReplyDeleteThanks Mary! ❤
DeleteLove the snarky side eye!
ReplyDeleteOh man it's so hard to imagine all she's gone through. What a fiesty gal! She sure is special.
And so hard to imagine what you've all gone through! You're also immeasurably strong.
Hugs and love! 💕
❤❤
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