Tuesday, June 10th - A Good, But Busy Morning

It is a good thing that Kevin and I stayed at the Hyatt across the street from Children's Mercy Hospital last night. This morning around 7:25 am we received a call from Sarah, one of Kinley's nurses for the day. She told us that the surgeons were ready to do a bronchoscopy on Kinley, but we needed to come over to sign the consent forms. Apparently the surgeons had an opening and wanted to get Kinley in first thing this morning. We were able to get to her baby station by 7:45 am to sign the necessary paperwork.

The bronchoscopy is a procedure where the surgeon goes down Kinley's throat with a microscopic camera to look for any reason that may be causing the right upper lobe of her right lung not to open. Kinley will need to be sedated for the procedure. The doctors originally thought that Kinley might have a bunch of mucus in her lung, but it turns out that the upper lobe of her right lung was just collapsed and a little inflamed from the pneumonia. The surgeon was able to suction a little mucus out of Kinley's lungs while she was down there with her camera, but for the most part we will just have to wait for the inflammation to go down. That will just take some time of Kinley being on antibiotics to treat the pneumonia. The surgeon did notice that in addition to the pneumonia, Kinley also has some yeast growing in her mouth, throat and lungs. This will be treated with an antifungal medication, Diflucan. Finally, since they had to take Kinley's original breathing tube out for the procedure, they put in a new tube which is a little larger. The larger tube should fit Kinley a little better.

After the procedure was done, Kevin and I were able to come back and be with Kinley. We learned from Sarah and Megan, Kinley's nurses for the day, that last night was pretty uneventful. No big issues or concerns to write about. Some good news is that Kinley's oxygen challenge this morning was 306!! Lets keep those high numbers coming.

Around 12:15 pm Dr. E and Dr. W came by to do rounds on Kinley. Basically the plan is to wait it out for 48 to 72 hours to see how Kinley and her lung are responding to the antibiotics and the Diflucan. She will remain on all the medications for another week. They also had respiratory therapist come in to look at Kinley and change her vent settings to help open the closed lobe of her right lung. Also discussed in rounds was the fact that Kinley's clotting factors are still a little off. The plan for that is to continue to treat with blood products. The doctors stated that being on ECMO for this amount of time can cause the machine to form clots, but switching out the machine usually results in a setback for the babies. Since Kinley will hopefully be coming off of ECMO in 48 to 72 hours the plan is to ride it out and not opt for a new machine just yet.

At 12:35 pm a respiratory therapist came by and changed Kinley's vent settings. She is still a little "out of it" from her procedure this morning, but she tolerated the changes to her vent well.

Kiney had an abdominal and head x-ray done this morning and the results are in...everything is looking normal so far, which is good. She also had a head sonogram, but that was done a little later and we do not have those results yet, but that is also a good sign.

Overall, a good, but busy morning for the Melcher family. As for the afternoon and early evening, Kinley is just sleeping away. She is more sedated today from the extra medications that she received before her procedure, but that should give her some time to rest. Now, if only her mommy and daddy could get some rest.