Hour by Hour

Thanks to my friend Liz for keeping the blog updated yesterday. I had the chance to come home and sleep last which meant Bill had the pleasure of staying with Livi in PICU. The nice thing about it is Livi wouldn't be waking him up, she's still sedated and will be for the duration of her time while intubated. The doctors are saying this could be a couple of days to a couple of weeks. Basically they don't know, a better estimate of time is simply hour by hour. The doctors said, "right now she is very sick. We look at things at an hour by hour basis. You'll know she's better when we start talking in term of tomorrow." So, last night the topical port that was mentioned could not be put in near her chest, they ended up accessing her right femoral artery. They originally had wanted to keep her femoral arteries for dialysis if needed. But the pic line was finally a success. Later, Dr. Berstein was able to get back from his there and back trip to Santa Barbara (he was scheduled to teach a seminar). When he walked in to see Livi his face fell. I've never seen a doctor care more for his patients. He was very emotional and made us feel so good. He spent time going through all Livi's systems explaining what's going on and what can happen. After he was done I casually asked him about my niece that was just born with a skin patch on her forehead. I guess there's been some debate of if and when to remove it and if it's cancerous. He spent a good 10-15 minutes talking to us about it and looking up case studies on the internet with us. He even said he'd get in touch with some doctors to find a good pediatric dermatologist, talk to them and then get my niece to see him/her. This is just one example of the incredible heart behind and incredibly bright man.

So, through the night Livi was put on dialysis. Not so much for her kidneys, more to clean her blood. This dialysis though will be left running for 24-48 hours instead of the normal 3 for kidney dialysis. They're hoping to get as much toxins out of her blood as possible. Because she was put on dialysis she had two nurses, just for her throughout the night, as opposed to the 1 she had NON-STOP during the day. Lisa was the day nurse and the poor thing didn't get a break. She finally stole away for a few minutes to use the restroom. She didn't even start charting, anything, until 6pm! BUSY BUSY BUSY! During the night they also needed to start another line for more meds. They tried doing an arterial line in her neck but they couldn't get it to accept the meds so they started using the dialysis machine to help administer the meds. Needless to say, Bill really didn't get much sleep. They had to leave the lights on the entire night. They did open up the glass doors that separate her room from the one next door and let Bill sleep in there with the lights of to be close.

I just got a call from Bill with an updated report from the PICU doctor. They said Livi's heart is starting to function more on its own, her lungs are needing less support from the ventilator, her kidneys are working better, the bad news is her pancreas is still self decstructing and now her liver is showing signs of failure.

We'll keep you posted.