Slow progress

Last night, Aaron and I went to bed furious. We felt like no progress had been made for the day. The day before he had failed being extubated (having the breathing tube taken out so that he can breathe on his own). Yet, they felt like they could just keep turning up his sedation medications and not backing down on his ventilator settings yesterday. I just couldn't understand why they want to extubate him in a few days, but not work towards helping him to be successful at it. So, our goal today was to go in and force them to come up with a plan. We need to wean the vent settings if he can tolerate it, we need to start backing off all of the sedation meds so that he can breathe when the tube is taken out.

After a night of no sleep and steam coming out of my ears, we went in for doctor rounds. Luckily, we had a new doctor on. She listened to all of our concerns and worries. She didn't completely agree with everything, but she did say that we could start working on the vent and slooooowly start turning down the sedation meds.

So, the progress for today:

• Decreased the Fentanyl drip by 1mcg/kg
• Decreased the pacer from a rate of 100 to a rate of 90
• Turned the vent settings down- O2 to 30% from 40%, respiratory rate down from 18 to 15, peep down from 8 to 6
• Increased feeds from 2mls to 4mls an hour
• They are going to clamp the chest tubes tonight and, if the x-ray looks good in the morning, they will pull the tubes out tomorrow.

We feel a lot better about today. I'm not expecting to make huge changes everyday, just snail-paced changes. I just want to see progress. I know that is unrealistic, but one can hope.