12-20-10

So, after a string of good to great days, we have hit a not so good day.

Cooper had hit a plateau and the weaning had stalled at 52% on the ecmo. Then of all things, due to a dirty diaper, Cooper through himself into a royal tizzy and really set himself back today. 

Around noon today, I came back to his "room" and found him trying to get himself off his bed and nearly pulling out all his tubes.  It was not a pretty sight.  I had to help try to calm him down and they had to give him an extra dose of fentanyl.  It seemed to calm him down for a few minutes, but about 10 minutes later he was trying to get off his bed again.  Then the dirty diaper was found.  It took 3 of us to try to keep him calm and clean him up.  Once we got him mostly clean, he calmed down.  They had to go back up on the ecmo settings to 62% due to his actions and his oxygen saturations dropping.

The plan for the rest of the day was to keep him calm and let him just recover from today.  They were not going to try to wean him unless he was calm and looking great.  As of last check, he was still pretty active and they had just kept him stable throughout the day.

The doctors have talked and they are changing him from the oscillating vent back to a conventional vent in the morning.  They feel that he might do better on this type of vent.  Then the hope is that they will be able to start the weaning process again and get him off ecmo within the next 48 hours.  If not, the other talk is that they will  do the hernia repair while on ecmo within the next 48 hours.  They do not like to do this since he is on heparin while on ecmo to thin his blood.  But the profusionist assured me that while there is a risk for bleeding, the risk is low that he wouldn't lose too much blood if they had to do the surgery while on ecmo.

So, we are just in a holding pattern until Cooper decides to let us in on his little secret as to when he is ready to come off ecmo.  We are still hopeful that it will be before Christmas.

Just an exhausting day.  But we are glad that he at least remained somewhat stable throughout the day.

Until tomorrow...
Sonya