Back Up at Primary's, What's Going On??

Okay, this is liable to be a bit disjointed, but for inquiring minds that want to know, and to hopefully straighten things out a bit in my own, here goes.

Hanging out in the emergency room.

Aaron's heart rate has been elevated for the past five days.  I mentioned that yesterday.  Today, I called his pediatrician about it and we decided to get an EKG (look at heart rhythms) a chest x-ray, and a bunch of labs.  I took him down to American Fork Hospital to do that about 2:30 p.m.  We got back about 4:15 and he actually did pretty well, although I had to turn up his oxygen on the way home to four liters.  When we got back home, he was thinking that perhaps four liters wasn't quite enough.  They weren't big drops, but he wasn't in the mid-90's where he belongs.

I turned him up a bit, and he still didn't come up, so we went with more, and then some more on top of that.  Finally, I gave up and pulled out the bag valve mask again and we bagged him on ten liters, just like last week.  And during this, I'm thinking, this is getting old.  We got him back into the high 90's and put him back on the vent.  For a little while (ten minutes?) he looked pretty good, but then, no dice.  He dropped again.  In a last ditch effort, I gave him Albuterol even though he didn't sound like he needed it.  Didn't work.  We were bagging him again, and also calling for help.

We ended up with quite a crowd in our home.  I didn't mince words with dispatch.  I told them he was in severe respiratory distress and we were already bagging him on ten liters.  He was slowly improving, but only slowly.

Since we've been up here, though, he's really look good, really good!  Like, why are we even here, good.  I/we did open his lungs quite a bit with the bagging because his PEEP valve is dialed to ten, and I figure if he's going to need extra help, we're really going to give it to him and not pussyfoot around.  All the labs and other tests done at AFH look great.  So they're all as stumped as I am.  We may be looking at another echo, just to see if pressures have changed.  We may have masked/undone things with the bagging and opening his lungs as much as we did.

We may just not be able to reduce his vent settings, although no one here seems to think that would have caused all this, not after having been stable on them for almost a month.  So we'll keep looking.  Thank you so much for keeping us in your prayers.  Please pray that we find some answers, and that they'll be answers that we can work with.

Faith is not without worry or care, but faith is fear that has said a prayer.  

~Author Unknown