The Emma Report

This morning Emma started to act “sick.” She was requiring more oxygen and have more frequent bradycardia spells (in which her heart rate slows down) and periods of apnea (in which she stops breathing), so the team felt she needed a break in order to conserve her energy. After some discussion, they made the decision to re-intubate her and she is now back on a ventilator. She’s still exhausted and very sleepy…

Today’s repeat abdominal xray didn’t show any big changes from yesterday — not worse, but not better either. Emma still has a lot of air in her belly (along with some blood), so until proven otherwise, they are treating her as if she does have NEC and are withholding her feeds and giving her antibiotics. In addition to the IV fluids (to prevent dehydration), she’s also being restarted on TPN (total parenteral nutrition) – the intravenous solution of sugar, minerals, vitamins and proteins which is given along with another mixture of lipids). Hopefully she will regain her strength and won’t lose too much weight. Then she might be better able to fight this infection. For now, as the docs say, it’s just wait and see….

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 25th, 2005 at 9:01 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.