Sunday, June 8th

Today Kevin and I arrived at Kinley's baby station around noon. Jackie and Tiffani were Kinley's nurses for the day. Tiffani gave us the quick rundown on Kinley's status overnight and into the morning when we arrived. She told us that Kinley's blood pressure goes down with the hydralazine, but as soon as it wears off, the BP rises again. They had to give a couple of doses of the BP medication overnight and this morning. They also increased Kinley's sedative medication drip to see if that would help lower her BP any. Her morphine is still at 80, but now her versed drip is up to 70. That seems to help a little. Kinley's chest x-ray this morning was only slightly better than yesterday. She still has an area in the right upper lobe of her lung that is not open all the way yet. Also, her blood gases are just OK for now. Kinley will have both checked again in the morning and hopefully they will improve so that she can be taken off of ECMO.

Dr. M is Kinley's doctor for today and she is thinking that the high blood pressure may actually be from a clot somewhere in Kinley or the ECMO machine. The reason for her thinking this way is because lab results for Kinley showed her clotting factors were a little off. She received some more blood products to try to correct the issue and the doctor ordered her blood to be a little thinner than it was previously. Dr. M also ordered another ultrasound to see if there were any visible signs of a clot in Kinley's main arteries and veins as well as her liver and kidneys. If you remember from yesterday, Kinley had an ultrasound of her brain to check for a bleed. Around 1:15 pm we received the final results for both ultrasounds, and they were both normal. However, Dr. M also ordered an analysis of Kinley's urine and they did find microscopic amounts of blood in her urine. This could be a sign of some kidney damage either from a clot or from the amount of blood products that Kinley is requiring as a result of being on ECMO. Dr. M ordered a series of abdominal ultrasounds to continue to check for clots in Kinley's kidneys. With Kinley being on the ECMO machine there is a delicate balance that has to be met in terms of keeping her blood thick enough so that she will not bleed, but also not think enough to cause clots. We are still trying to find that balance. Hopefully Kinley will be able to come off of ECMO soon and we won't have to worry about that anymore.

Tomorrow is another big day for Kinley. She will have a heart echo test in the morning, a head ultrasound, a chest x-ray and an ultrasound of her abdomen. If all looks well and her blood gas tests look alright we will hopefully try to wean her off ECMO again. Kinley is such a strong girl at such a young age. We are so proud of her and will be by her side cheering her on tomorrow.