Since the completely overwhelming busyness of our morning, it has been slow-mo for the rest of the day. Babygirl has been sleeping since the extubation (removal of the vent tube). She's no longer sedated, but she is OUT, with the notable exception of a couple of bouts of vomiting that left me changing my clothes faster than I intended.
They will be enforcing visiting limitations (although, honestly, but that standard they should have thrown me out HOURS ago LOL), so once I leave tonight I will have to decide what 4 hours I want to spend with her tomorrow. That will be a tough one.
I had lost the password to her MyChart, and so I spent some of my quiet time today getting that reset. I had the opportunity to go through her lab results for the past 2 days. It was both terrifying (it was worse than I thought when we got here) and reassuring (it's better now than I thought it might be). Her creatinine is down by 2/3 of the original number, but she is still in serious kidney failure.
Apparently a common dialysis machine malfunction was responsible for some blood loss last night, adding to the "dilution factor" of rehydration, so that explains the steeper-than-expected drop in her hemoglobin that led to her transfusions. They've been watching for the problem since, and are switching out the filters much sooner than typical to avoid a recurrence.
Babygirl continues to make urine on her own at a reasonable level. She isn't really taking any food or fluids beyond the Ensure-like stuff they have going down her nose (which, by the way, smells worse than Alimentum baby formula when you barf it up). She needs to be able to drink and get out of bed sooner rather than later.
Fever is improving. Antibiotics have been on board, but they cannot penetrate to the center of an abscess. Bacteria-detecting slides of a specimen from the OUTSIDE of the abscess did not show any visible germs. Specimens from the INSIDE of that li'l ugly showed what will likely be confirmed to be staphylococcus on culture, but that will take a day or so.
So that is where we are. They are drawing more blood right now (from an arterial line that monitors her blood pressure and allows for easy access without any poking). I don't expect much in terms of significant change, but we are creeping toward better.
DeeDee
PS Today was the SECOND time that someone tried speaking to her in Spanish when she didn't respond to English. I mean, good on you for thinking of it, but incoherent works the same in every language as far as I can tell LOL.
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