We're Baaaaack!

We’re here again.  Aaron has been looking good, so good, for quite a while.  Then yesterday (Sunday, Mar 27) after his 2 pm feeding, he started acting funny.  He was desating and alarming quite a bit.  I vented him and he had a LOT of tummy bubbles.  But he kept struggling, so I vented him again.  Finally, I set him up with continuous vent and he continued to bubble right up to his 5 pm feeding.  He also went up a lot on his oxygen, from 2 l/min to 5 l/min.  Tried suctioning, but really didn’t get much, and he sounded a bit tighter, but still okay.  I was able to turn him down a little bit, but he was still above baseline.

Usually Aaron gets his feedings over 30 minutes, but since he was struggling, at 5 pm I spread it out over 1 hour.  He did a little better, but was still having trouble with sat rates by the time he was done.  Not as much gas, but still quite a bit, especially when we don’t usually vent him at all.  Same thing for 8 pm, so I changed his trach out about 9:30, after his last feeding had time to settle.  When I pulled the trach, there were a lot of green secretions that came out of the stoma with it.  A bit more suctioning, and we actually came down to 4 l/min.  I thought, I hoped, that this meant we were on our way.  No dice.

Brittany was our nurse last night and I asked her to wake me if he ended up at more than 5 l/min for longer than ten minutes.  At 3, it was time.  So I called for a transport and we came up to Primary’s.  Really not sure what’s going on.  He’s looking pretty good right now, although he’s still on the equivalent of our 4 l/min.  They’re running tests.  So far we’ve had his blood gas come back, measuring how well he’s processing the oxygen he’s getting in his blood stream, and it looks as good as it ever does.   His x-ray also looks Aaron- normal.  My sense is that this may be tummy related since he’s having the most trouble when he’s eating.  Hopefully, we can get some answers and help him.  For right now, he’s actually resting quietly.  Kinda wish I was too.