1.10.22 Trach Floor 75

Aimee spending time in her chair and trialing a new iPad holder today. We get to be testers for it for 2 days and then fill out a review to tell the hospital what we think of it.

I’m so disappointed. We had to cancel Aimee’s tentative discharge date and cancel the training for TPN at the end of this week. We are still working to convince anesthesia to proceed with the central line. There is an increased risk, due to her recent cold, of bronchial spasms below the trach requiring time up in the ICU post procedure. However, there are also other risks that we have weighed, like a lung puncture and an accidental carodid artery incision. We feel that we have been cautious in putting off the procedure to this point. Tomorrow is 14 days since she showed symptoms of her virus and she has now been at her respiratory baseline for 2 full days. I am meeting with the anesthesiologist tomorrow to discuss risks. 

Aside from working on this goal, the virus that Aimee had messed with her TPN significantly. It slowed her gut function down even more, which caused her gastric suction contents to more than double. Her labs have caused the team to make modifications to her TPN levels of potassium, magnesium, ect the past couple of blood draws. Now that she is recovered and her output has decreased, they will have to remodify based on the new levels. We are trying to find out how long they want those levels to be stable before it would be safe for us to leave. I am hoping that they will say one week. 

One good item from today is that we received the home low intermittent gastric suction machine to trial. I am praying, praying that it works. It is the only one that exists and appears to not have been updated since the 70’s. If it doesn’t work… well I have no idea. It seems fairly finicky so far, though it is nearly silent.