Day 24: post rounds

Emerson had a nice calm evening. While she did have a fever last night, they have definitely curved down, less often and less intense. Hopefully she will stop having fevers altogether. She continues to breathe over her ventilator (it could be greater and more often though) and her tidal volume has increased. To get off the ventilator she needs to be more awake and fever free. We will continue to ween her from pain and sedation medication. As long as her withdrawal scores continue to be less than three we can continue to ween her at a faster rate. This evening we may consider doubling the rate. It could be two days before she is off the Versed. Jessica and I are fingers crossed for extubation by the end of the week. The IJ (internal jugular) central line, will be removed in a couple days or today depending upon if they can get a peripheral IV line or she is weened off of the the Versed. Versed and TPN (nutrition) are not compatible and have to go in separate lines. The IJ is a double lumen but her new PICC is only a single. Once the IJ is gone she can come off the heparin so one less pump and drug there. This is hopefully a week of subtraction.