Her left eye is bulging this morning. They said that can happen with intubation. Usually it is both eyes...but she keeps her head to the left.
Her renal panel ( creatinine and BUN) that looks at kidney function is still bad. It is still barely within normal limits. It is not back to her normal levels. We really need her kidneys to recover. Hopefully it will just take more time.
Her CRP ( level of inflammation) has come down. Yea! It is below 5 now, so they are going to send some nutrition labs including some extra labs to look at her elevated copper.
Her hemoglobin continues to drop. She is at 6.4 today and they infuse below 6. So they anticipate she will need to be infused again tomorrow. I asked why her hemoglobin continues to drop if the bleeding has stopped. They said #1) because we keep sending labs...but everything they are drawing is necessary and #2) her body is really sick. We know that her bone marrow is making red blood cells, but she just can’t keep up with how sick she is. It should stabilize as she continues to get better.
Her potassium was low again today, they gave more potassium by IV. This is why I hate lasix. It makes you pee off your fluids, then your electrolytes drop, then you give IV electrolytes and fluids, then your body hangs onto the fluids and the process starts over. It is a vicious cycle. But it is necessary.
They are gathering emergency supplies to extubate ( pull out the breathing tube). So this will probably happen in the next few hours.
There is always the chance when you extubate that you will need to immediately intubated ( put the breathing tube back in). If they have to re-intubated it is bad. The breathing tube causes damage and inflammation to your airway, so trying to re-intubate can cause more trauma (damage).
They always have lots of Dr’s, Respiratory Therapists, nurses etc there when they extubate.
They usually let me be present for both intubation or extubation. I can handle extubation, but not intubation. I can handle a lot of medical things, but intubation is emotionally too traumatic to me. I can’t handle it. My emotions run too high during intubation.
To clarify something I talked about in a previous post...her lungs being stiff. There are several reasons for this....lots of free fluid and inflammation, her lungs are very sick, and she normally doesn’t breathe deeply, so they don’t get exercised( stretched).
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Mikael, thank you for taking time to keep us all up-to-date on Ellie. We are praying for her recovery and for your health and sanity as you deal with all of this. Love you both so very much.
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