Cold (post 2, day 3)

Summary for those who don't want to read the whole post...
She woke up very cold.  We have not seen seizures.  But she is not awake.  There are probably still alot of rescue seizure meds in her system.  We won't know how her seizures are doing until those meds get out of her system.  Coronavirus came back negative.

Now for the details...
Fri 4.17.2020 @ 8 AM  Day 3 in the hospital
Man I hate being in the hospital.  At home her pulse ox that measures her HR and O2 have certain specified parameters and will beep loudly to call me in if she exceeds the parameters.  This allows me to know when something is going on when I am not in the room with her. 

Her HR and temp are best friends.  So when her HR is below 60 I know without even taking her temp that she is cold and I need to start working on it.  If it gets below 50 I know she is freezing and it is much more urgent that I need to be actively working quickly to warm her up.

The hospital automatically has different parameters set on her vitals and there are no alarms within the room.  I forgot to tell them to reset the parameters to her home settings, to turn on alarms in the room and I forgot to tell them if her HR is below 60 that they need to check her temp.  So yes, it is my mistake.

Anyway, I woke up this morning at 6:30ish and her HR was 48.  Nothing was being done.  No temperature was being taken.  No one was trying to warm her up.  Yes, once again it was my fault.  But it send me into a panic.

Her normal temp is low...93 F to 95.5 F.  That is where we want her. 

Normal thermometers only go down to about 93 or 92 F.

The one I use goes down to 90 F.

So when I saw her HR was 48 this morning, I took her temp and the thermometer wouldn't even read.  It just says L for Low.  This means her temp was below 90 F.

This happens to Ellie.  I don't like it.  But it happens.  But normally if I have my parameters and alarms I can catch her on the downward trend and catch her before it gets critical.

I put her electric blanket on for an hour with a bunch more blankets and pillow piled on top.  I told the nurse that we needed a baer hugger. 

I love the baer hugger.  I wish I could get one for home.  But only medical facilities can buy them.  It is like a blanket with holes in it.  It blows warm air into the blanket and the warm air comes out the holes onto the person to warm them up.

I always have to educate the nurses and sometimes the residents about the baer hugger.  They don't know what it is, how to get one, where to get one, how to use one.

So while the nurse worked on getting a baer hugger her hour was up with the electric blanket.  I retook her temp. This time at least the thermometer would read.  It was 90.3 F.

I restarted the electric blanket timer for another hour.  About halfway through this cycle (so 1.5 hours of using the electric blanket) the nurse brought in the baer hugger.

I took her temp and it was 92.8 F.  So it was coming up slowly.

8:15 AM
She has the baer hugger running on high for 20 min.

The nurse said looking at her night-time trends her HR has been about 50 since about 5 AM.  Grrrrr....mad at myself.  She has been freezing for several hours and I did nothing about it.  Getting cold and getting warmed up take a lot out of her physically.  It is best to keep her right in her happy zone.  We don't need more stress on her body or brain right now.

I had the nurse fix her alarms and parameters and talked to her about checking her temp if her HR gets below 60.

I had to bump her respiratory treatments until we get her temp up.

OK..enough self-loathing.  Moving on.

I have not seen any seizures during the night or today.  She is still totally asleep even though she has had her ritalin (a med she takes to help her with her alertness).  She probably still has a lot of rescue seizure meds in her system that are still making her sleepy.  We really won't know how her seizures are doing until she wakes up and the extra seizure meds wear off.

8:30 AM
Her 20 minutes of Baer hugger are done.  She is at 93.5 F.  I like her to get to 94 F before stopping warming her up.  If we go above that she keeps trending up and will end up too hot.

We will give her a 20 min break and then do another 20 min on the baer hugger.

Coronavirus came back negative as I suspected.  She has virtually 0 exposure.  We would still like prayers that she doesn't catch it in the hospital.

In other news...I normally only bring 1 spare set of clothes and underwear and 1 PJ's when she in inpatient and I do not leave.  So that is what I brought this time as well. Normally I can use the laundry facilities and wash my clothes each day.  Well, I have been quarantined to her room, so I was out of clothes.  So last night I washed them with shampoo and hung them to dry...hahahahaha.