Friday Update - ICU Day 5

Not much new change to report today:

Shirley's urine output did not meet their targets: net down ~500 cc versus target of 2 liters. Lasix doses has been increased to help relieve her fluid retention. They are also looking at ways of being more judicious in her IV input to help with this equation.

They tried another breathing pressure test this morning.  The metric they are using for this test is called PEEP:  Positive end-expiratory pressure.  This is a measure of pressure above atmospheric pressure that remains in your lungs when you exhale. It's the pressure that keeps your lungs from collapsing (or so I understand).  Us normal people have PEEP readings in the range of 3 to 5,  The ventilator is set for PEEP = 5 right now.

For the test, they changed the PEEP setting to 25.  The vent was changed so that it waited for Shirley to initiate the breath, then provided the extra pressure to keep her lungs inflated.  Yesterday, they tried the test with PEEP set for 20 and she was not able to do it.  Today, with it set to 25, she was able to get in 20 minutes of self-initiated breathing.

Since they now have the central line out of her groin, they got her into a sitting position today.  They have a sling under her bedding and an overhead lift that allows them to get her out of bed and sitting in a hammock-like contraption (See photo).  This is helpful for her circulation as well as keeping her muscle tone.

Her belly is still firm and tender and while the labs have not shown any confirmation of infection, they did another X-ray but it showed nothing that is prompting the team team to want to do anything further at this point.

The wait goes on.

Shirley "getting a lift"