Saturday, May 31st

We arrived at Kinley's baby station around 11:00 am. Today's lucky winners are. . . . .Phyllis and Dianne! Come on down! You are the next set of nurses who get to take care of our baby girl. Congratulations!

On a less fun and more serious note, Phyllis and Dianne inform us that Kinley's neck is still oozing blood. The surgeon came back last night and put in one more stitch, but it wasn't enough to stop the bleeding. The surgeon also said that one stitch was the most that he could do. Since the one stitch did not fix the bleed, Kinley's heparin levels will be lowered so that hopefully she will be able to clot the leak herself, but we don't want to lower her heparin levels too low because that could cause a clot to form in the ECMO machine.

After lunch Kinley received some red blood cells to help replace what she has been losing and some platelets to help her clot the leak in her neck. As a group, we do not want to move Kinley too much for fear of making the bleed worse and we also don't want Kinley moving too much on her own for the same reason of possibly worsening the bleed.

Around 2:30 pm, Phyllis and Dianne called the surgeon to discuss how to handle Kinley's neck bleed. The surgeon suggested that they completely remove Kinley's bandages and redress the area. At 3:15 pm Kristen (another nurse in the NICU) came in to change Kinley's dressings with the assistance of Dianne and Phyllis. Instead of using regular gauze Kristen brought in some special gauze that the operating room uses for internal bleeding. Overall it was a pretty messy job, but Kinley's neck looks 200% better and does not appear to be oozing anymore. The entire nursing staff here at Children's Mercy does an amazing job of caring for, not only Kinley, but all of the sick babies here. Thank you so much.

For the first time, that we had ever seen, Kinley had the hiccups around 4:45 pm. We all made a little joke of it because while she was hiccuping her O2 saturation (in her blood) went up to 99 and 100%. That is the highest it has been since she has been here.

Our little urine factory is doing great. Around 5:20 pm we found out that her urine output for today has been 5 cc/kilo/hour. (Remember - we want that above 1.)

With Kinley being on ECMO her morphine and versed doses have been less than when she was on the high frequency ventilator. This has allowed her to be much more awake today. She has been opening her eyes and looking around the room for good chunks of time. We are very thankful that, for the most part, today has been uneventful. We hope for many more in the near future so Kinley can rest up to come off ECMO and have her CDH (congenital diaphragmatic hernia) repair surgery.