Monday, June 23rd - A Busy Morning

Today we arrived to find Katie watching Kinley again. We could see from looking at Kinley that she got her art line placed (it is in her left foot) while we were gone. Katie also informed us that Kinley had a pretty good night. When we arrived this morning her oxygen coming from the vent was at 38% and Kinley was still able to oxygenate her blood well at that setting. Her blood pressure was also normal and Kinley looked even better than yesterday thanks to the lasix taking off excess fluid. She is starting to get her girlish figure back.

The doctors rounded on Kinley around 9:45 am today. Basically the plan is to continue to try and wean her vent settings. She will be weaned on the percentage of oxygen coming from the vent and also weaned on some settings on the high frequency vent since she was doing a good job at keeping her CO2 down as well. We will just monitor her BP today and so far it is looking good without any interventions by the doctors. Lastly, Kinley will get another heart echo test today to determine if Kinley's pulmonary pressure has come down since her diaphragm repair surgery and coming off of ECMO.

Since Kinley already has her mid line in and just recently got her art line placed, the only other line that she needs is her PICC line. Barb, the ECMO coordinator, is going to try and place that line later this morning. Once that last line is in, Kinley will be able to have her belly button tubes taken out and will officially be a "big girl", at least as far as IV lines go.

Kinley now has all of her "big girl" IV lines, the PICC line, Art line and Mid line. Barb was able to place Kinley's PICC line by going through her right leg and Katie has removed all of Kinley's belly button lines.

The heart echo technician arrives a little bit before noon, but before she can begin, Kinley needs to have her dressing pulled back. This is so the tech can have direct access to her chest. The exam does not take long, but we will need to wait for the cardiologist for the final results.

With Kinley's dressing already partially removed Katie and Delores, a nurse practitioner, decide to change the entire thing. This time they will only re-dress the areas around where the drains enter and leave the surgery site open to the air to help it heal. Kinley gets a little fussy at the beginning when all of the gauze and tape are being removed, but she soon calms down.

Here are a few pics from yesterday.