PICU

Unfortunately enough really rough day for our little guy! Alex's temp went up in the middle of the night and we could not get his heart rate down. After several hours of watching him, the PICU attending was not comfortable with the way he looked and decided he needed to be moved into the ICU. She is the same Dr. who was on call in December of 2010 when Alex was septic. She is one of the main reasons our boy is still with us today. She remembers that night and how quickly Alex crashed and was not willing to take any chances. As much as I didn't want to move, I love that she cares so much about Buggy and wanted to be sure he was safe. From the time we got back to the PICU it was clear that Alex's oxygen saturations are not what we would like for them to be. We have struggled for most of the day to even keep them in the 90's. Alex is unable to take deep breaths without pain. After morning rounds they decided to increase his pain meds in hope s of getting him to breathe better. Unfortunately, it did not work. Respiratory therapists have kept a close watch on him all day and by tonight his left lung has virtually no lung sounds and his right lung is considerably diminished. After talk of starting CPAP, tonight we decided to try oxygen first and his saturations are the best they have been all day. I am hopeful he can keep them up through the night.

His temps have climbed all day. For most of the day they were between 102 and 102.5. By this evening they had reached 103.4. We now have a fan blowing on him and have taken away his blanket. He is not happy to say the least.

His labs this morning brought both good and bad news. His liver numbers while still extremely high aree at least trending down. However his pancreas levels looked much worse today. His amylase is about 3500 (should be under 100) and his lipase which we had previously been told was >3000 is actually 25,000 (should be under 300). We did a chest xray and liver ultrasound today. The chest xray showed low lung volume and dilated loops of bowel. His ultrasound was not read yet.

So all in all I think we will be in the PICU a little longer. No one feels he is as stable as they would like right now. Although his vital signs are better tonight then they have been all day. I am hopeful he will turn the corner tomorrow.

Please pray for Buggy's comfort and that he can turn the corner and start the road to recovery.
Ali