Ruby has had a better day today!
The plan was to leave her sedation alone for today, but she was too sleepy, so they cut the dose of one of her meds in half. Since then she's been more "with it," and wiggling around some, but she's still comfortable. She was great for trach care, and has been handling movement well over all.
I spent a lot of time playing with her and interacting with her this afternoon, which was nice. She's not completely herself, but definitely more herself than before.
For ventilation, they have her on 40% oxygen and weaned her PEEP to 9, and so far so good!
They were able to wean her off the esmolol last night, which was amazing! The other one she needs to be weaned off of is milrinon, but they don't expect to be able to try that for a bit longer.
They increased the other beta blocker dose a bit to compensate for the lack of esmolol, and her heart rate hasn't gone over 116 today- (around 4pm she was pretty upset about how long the hydromorph was taking to kick in and her heart rate stayed in range the whole time.)
Her chest tube output for yesterday was only 7mls, and they want to see it under 15mls/24hrs for several days before they remove the right chest tube. Ultrasound isn't showing much fluid there or on the other side, so that was encouraging!
She pooped twice (overnight and again this morning) and had a decent bowel irrigation today. Still lots of air in her tummy, but hoping to move some of that around more once we can get her out of bed again and with more irrigations.
She is scheduled for her trach change tomorrow, so she will have that done between 8 and 9. It was supposed to be today, but the ENT didn't want us to have to deal with being on the waitlist again, since they need the cardiac anesthesiologist to be there for the procedure. They will do a scope down her throat to see how her esophagus and vocal chords are recovering from being intubated. They may have to treat any issues while they are in there, but hopefully there won't be any!
Lizzie is home with Tom now, and seems to be pretty happy! They'll probably come for a visit next weekend.
We're thankful for progress, and for a good day! Hoping and praying for a goodnight and more progress as we move along. Thank you all for your love and prayers! ❤️
