Wake Up, Day 2: The Fight Begins

Up until about 3:30 this afternoon, Mason really did well with his wake up. He was groggy when he awoke, coughed a little bit, and the allowed the ventilator to keep working and fell back asleep. We were so thankful for the gradual awakening.

However, at about 3:30, after turning his Propofol down to 30 mcg/kg/min, things started moving and shaking. Well, really, Mason started moving and shaking. He started desaturating fairly regularly because of either mucus plugs and/or agitation. We have been able to suction quite a bit of gunk out of his lungs, but it feels like we're really not making any headway. He continues to desaturate every time he wakes up and comes back up with suctioning and all out fatigue. Mason has also been quite agitated and is not letting the ventilator breathe well for him. He isn't pushing back against the air coming in, which is much better than before, but is still "fighting" the vent as he doesn't let the air in. It seems that the 30 of the Propofol may just be too low on his current dose of Ativan and Methadone.

So, since we're now in the night shift and there's fewer people around to be there to help him out, we have gone back up to 60 on the Propofol and increased his Ativan. We'll just have to try again tomorrow to resume the Propofol wean.

Prayer requests: 1) that we can find the right dose of the Ativan and Methadone to allow us to resume weaning the Propofol without agitation, and 2) that we can gain ground and get the mucus out to allow his lungs to function better.