1.19.22 Trach Floor 84

Ed’s Post

Grumpy Bird Goes for a Walk. 

That was me today. Pretty much from the word “go” this morning. Let’s just say that the nurse today and I did NOT get along 🤨. She finally graced us with her arrogant presence about an hour and a half later than she should have been in here this morning. All the while the IV pump alarm was going off and Aimee was late to start meds that take multiple hours. After only being in the room for about 15 minutes, she  called in the risk nurse from the ICU to assess Aimee, without discussing it with me first! She hasn’t worked with Aimee in over a month (and at that only a shift) and yet felt that she knew Aimee well enough to need to escalate on her own 😠. So many other things happened today with her, but that was the one that really got me fired up. Aimee is fighting not only Tracheitis, but pneumonia too. We have already discovered this and been in consult with the medical team and the pulmonologist. If Aimee was worsening and needed more and more support throughout the shift, then we would call in the risk nurse. 🙄

Okay, moving on. Pulmonology came by today multiple times to discuss the recurring Tracheitis and how we can help prevent it in the future. This is Aimee’s 3rd case in 3 months. Essentially they don’t know what causes it. However, there is an inhaler antibiotic (similar to the prophylactic antibiotic we are using to prevent UTIs), which he recommended that we could use every other month to help prevent Tracheitis. It is not something they normally prescribe, but given our goal of staying home, they were willing to recommend this treatment for us. 

We also discussed adjusting her vent settings to better support her now. She has gained so much weight and it is a part of how they calculate the settings. The hope is that this increase maybe will help reduce her frequent infections as well. The Pulmonologist worked with our RT today and spent some time trialing different settings. I got my first chance to bag Aimee outside of trach training. 

In other news, we heard back from IR and they are willing to place a tunneled central line for us without waiting as incredibly long as General Surgery was requiring. They actually offered to do it tomorrow! However, Aimee is still fighting this current sickness and we have asked for a time slot early next week. Stay tuned, it does depend on anesthesia agreeing, but it sounds very likely that we could get it placed next week! 

Her mucous cultures grew a bit more over the past 36 hours and showed multiple different bacteria strains. The team has a bit clearer picture of what she has now and they have added another antibiotic to cover the new growth. Now she will need to be on both to cover the different types.