A turn for the worse

Elizabeth has not been doing well this week.

We were on our way to the General and almost there when we got a call from the doctor on duty.Mum was talking while I was driving, but it didn't sound very good from my end.

Elizabeth had been deteriorating all day. They had stopped her feeds. She had regressed to the point where she was on 100% oxygen and the HFO (High Frequency Oscillating) ventilator.

The HFO keeps the lungs inflated and does rapid in-and-out breaths as a treatment for PIE (Pulmonary Interstitial Emphysema). PIE is a condition where air has leaked into the wrong side of the lungs. This can actually be caused from being on a ventilator, as apparently they're hard on the little lungs. The RTs (Respitory Therapists) walk a fine line. Too much or too little ventilation, and there's trouble.

So, she'd been given steroids to reduce lung inflamation, and she was on mild sedation due to the HFO. In addition, her hemoglobin levels were low and they were treating it as sepsis (a blood infection) and had given her antibiotics and a blood transfusion. (a little one, of only 15ml... but still, the poor kid had IVs everywhere)


Basically, they'd done everything they could for her, and they were telling us that it didn't look very good.


So I had to have a good talking to her. I held her little hand, apologized for not being there for a few days and promised I'd do better. I told her the important rules of the house. ("When Mummy's unhappy, everybody is unhappy") I'm not sure, I might also have promised her a pony...

Anyway, we were there a few hours, and while we were there, her blood gas O2 levels crept up, her C02 levels crept down to an acceptable level, and things seemed to settle down.

Maybe it was the transfusion, maybe it was me holding her hand, maybe it was the pony. But she had a good night.