Blog Archives

Thomas was extubated this morning at 11am. He had been nil by mouth since 6am and was quite irritated before extubation.

Unfortunately this didn’t stop, and he would not settle. Throughout the day, I stayed with him to try and calm him all day but there was nothing I could do to calm him.

At 5pm it was decided that he was struggling too much and he was too unsettled and needed to be retubed. I asked them to give him one more hour, as I really believed (and still do) that if he would calm down, he would do better.

I came back after handover at 7pm to find him on sipap (a face mask providing some pressure).

He lasted until 5am before being reintubated. This was because he got a sudden spike in his temperature and the drs were worried that he had become septic again...

Another stable day of weaning and preparing Thomas for extubation tomorrow 🙂

You are looking at my first ever hold!!!

Ok, so it was on the bed, but he was in my arms 🙂

Another day of ventilation weaning, and another run on cpap ventilation. A settled day.

A mostly stable day today. His ventilation was weaned back down to low pressures which is where he was before he was extubated yesterday. The drs are planning his next extubation and wanting to have everything perfect before giving him another go.

Thomas was extubated to optiflow this morning at 11am. He did well for a few hours and then appeared to be working too hard.

He was given a second chance on a nasal cpap ventilation however after another 3 hours was working too hard again, so was reintubated 🙁

It was decided not to extubate Thomas today as he tested positive for having RSV.

A PCR was sent off to see if there was anything else that he was growing so we will just have to await the results of it.

Happy one month old Thomas!

Today started off with a blood transfusion due to low haemogobin numbers.  This is a number that we are always chasing and topping up due to the amount of blood that Thomas has taken everyday for cultures, blood gases and other tests.

We don’t have any results through yet to know if he had a non haemolytic transfusion reaction, but the general thought is that it is more ventilator related than blood or clot.

Thomas had a bronchoscope performed today. I was able to watch this procedure which I was very pleased about as I was able to see a huge difference between pre and post surgery.

Thomas’ consultant told me that he was ‘pleasantly surprised’ with the his results and the dr overseeing the scope also explained that his airways appeared better than they had e...

A day of strange results for Thomas today. Started off positive with his infection markers still decreasing. Down to 17 now so his sepsis really seems to be under control. However his APTT ( blood clotting) results came back very high so there is question if this an an anomaly, a line contamination or a problem with his heparin dosage. He was presenting as quite jittery this morning so he was given a brain scan just to check that there was no bleeding in his vein (which was a huge worry to me when I was told!). His brain scan showed all was good though which was a huge relief.

Later this evening some swab results came back as positive from growing an airborne infectious bacteria called CPE which he’d been swabbed for 10 days ago...

No extubation today. Aiming for tomorrow. They want Thomas to have a rested day on CPAP minimum ventilation and to work ont he pressure that keep his lungs partically open. This has been left at ‘8’ for a while now and they would ideally like it down to 5/6.

Other than final ventilation weans, a settled day was planned and that’s what he had.

He was put back onto bipap over night to give him a rest to get him ready for tomorrow…his big day! Come on Thomas!

Thomas went for a CT angiogram today to have a look at how his heart and respiratory system are working in relation to each other.

He was taken off in his bed and went on a journey all the way to radiography!

The official report is not yet complete however I have been told that the CT showed positive results regarding his airways and vessels and that they married up with yesterday’s bronchoscopy results showing that his airways are in a better state than was originally thought. Good news! Aiming for Extubation tomorrow.