Kinley's New Home

At 8 pm, Kate and I went into the NICU to visit Kinley in her new home. When we arrived, Kinley had just finished having some x-rays taken. The x-rays were taken so they could look at her internal organs and also check the placement of her IVs. Kinley's new home is in the "ECMO Room" at station B 19. She is not on ECMO, but they call it the "ECMO Room" because it is connected to the operating room where babies are placed on ECMO. We visited with Julie, the nurse who would be caring for Kinley, about how Kinley was doing. Julie told us that Kinley is trying to breath over the high frequency ventilator (behind Nurse Julie in 1st pic below) which is what they don't want her to do because the ventilator should be doing the breathing for her. So they are trying to use drugs to slow her breathing and allow the ventilator to do most of the work. They have done a few blood gas tests to check on Kinley's O2 (oxygen), CO2 (carbon dioxide) and blood Ph levels (the acidity of her blood). They want her O2 levels above 60 (anything lower than that will require ECMO), her CO2 levels around 45 and her Ph level around the 7.3s. So far her Ph level is a little low and her CO2 level is a bit high. Her O2 levels keep fluctuating between good (above 100) and low (in the 70s).



Here I am at my new home at Children's Mercy. My nurse Julie is taking really good care of me.


Here is a litte better pic of my baby station at Children's Mercy.