Today was pretty good! They were able to take lots of fluid off and wean down her nitric to 5 again. She's been able to maintain a good sat and BP for most of the time, occasionally she would drop her BP lower when she fell asleep but her SATs have been staying in the low 90's pretty consistently.
She had a big poop this afternoon and another little one this evening. They have her on sildenafil and bosentin (those oral meds for her pulmanory hypertension that weren't getting absorbed while she was on the vasoconstricting drugs) now as well as the epoprostenol for her pulmonary hypertension, so hopefully that will help them wean off the nitric... as long as she is absorbing the meds in her tummy but she seems to be so far!
She'll need to remain stable a while longer for us to be able to hold her, since we wouldn't want to be holding her during an episode. But she's awake and wiggling and she is blinking her eyes, which are much less puffy with how much fluid she was able to pee out today. She's not happy about her tube, with how little sedation she is on now.
Where they are a little under staffed and the unit is almost full they want to just let her stay where she's at tonight, but will at least try to wean her off a bit of oxygen. Dr. Krmpotic has been on all day and will be on all night, she's been trying to take things slow and not get too carried away with making changes. They will be leaving the nitric at 5 for tonight though.
They will be checking on the clot every two days, so she'll have an echo for that tomorrow.
The next stage will be hard with her coming off of all these meds and struggling with being on the vent. I can tell she would be screaming at me if she could just use her voice, and she does look a bit bewildered and sometimes she looks really upset. From what we've been told it will be worse once she's off all the sedation. With that said, please be praying that everything goes smoothly with the weaning process. Where she's been ventilated for so long, there always a risk that she may need some other form of support for her lungs if they aren't working so well afterwards.
(I wrote this last night but "rounds" didn't happen until really late and my phone died. I'll post one for this morning after rounds and all the usual morning things.)
