Very Long Night and Day

Bailey went into flutter last night at 9:00. Well, poo. They immediately stopped the drain line to her belly, and put her on a face mask of nitric oxide. She scared me. She was laying there just fine and she lifted her head with big round eyes and said, "What's going on?!" Right then the monitors started going off as her heart rate jumped up to 180. Of course our staff started paging Dr. T, Dr. Hubbard and Dr. Darragh. Dr. Hubbard (the on-call cardiologist - she's wonderful too) ended up spending the night here to keep an eye on her rhythm strips. I guess her heart was doing some kind of beats that she's never done before, and I can't even begin to remember the name. Her blood pressure was dropping and other numbers were out of whack. How scary. It meant another cardioversion (#21), but in the midst of ICU and all the machines and lines that are already hooked up to her and the fact that she's inside the first 24 hours of a procedure, things were pretty heavy for a while. Finally, at 4:00 am, Bailey asked that I call her dad. She was getting pretty scared. All the all-night attention was pretty intimidating, but they were pretty concerned. They cardioverted this morning about 9:00 and, thank God, it was quick and smooth.

We were hoping that was the end of the drama for the day, but Dr. T wanted to try to drain just a little bit more off so they started the drain back up moving very slowly this time, and they took her off the nitric oxide at the same time. That didn't work. The nurse just walked normally into the room, as she had been all day long, and took out this dopler box thing which is apparently a definitive blood pressure reading. (Her art line reading and her cuff reading were not matching, so they wanted a true BP.) She couldn't find the pulse, so she asked another nurse to help. She found it right away and we all laughed, but we didn't laugh very long. Her BP was 48, and Bailey suddenly felt like she was really, really weak and couldn't move. Well, let me tell you. It was a time for prayer and I certainly did that. She paged Dr. T and Dr. Hubbard and they both instructed her to stop the drain and put her back on nitric oxide. They were finished with the drain. And she started feeling much better immediately back on the nitric oxide. So that's where we're staying for the night. We're still in ICU of course.

So T came back just a little while ago to check on her, and he decided to take out the drain cathether in her belly. She was, of course, scared to do that, but he did it, was very gentle, and it didn't hurt Bailey too badly. But now, the fluid is still coming out of the hole and keeps saturating the dressings. Bailey's feeling fine but she's grossed out because the saturated dressing starts to allow drippings down her side. She doesn't like that. They are going to note the time it takes to fill a dressing and then call Dr. T.

Hopefully our night will be completely and utterly uneventful. I'm hoping we can all get some sleep tonight.

Talk to you tomorrow,
Angie