Tuesday, March 9, 2010

Low sats

Magnus had a pretty rough night, as did Iggy, who stayed over with him in the hospital. I mentioned that Magnus was having a fussy day yesterday, and it only got worse...basically, he woke up crying at 5 a.m. and only slept for about 20 minutes between then and the time I went home around 9 p.m.

I had also been noticing that his oxygen saturations (or "sats") were pretty low. I had mentioned it to one of the nurses earlier, but she thought it was just because he was fussing so much. But then last night, they started to get concerned about it.

I wasn't here overnight, but according to Iggy, Magnus continued to be fussy, and his sats were really low, even with his oxygen cannula turned up all the way. And as if he wasn't fussy enough already, he had to have blood drawn several times and have a new IV put in (this one is in his scalp, yuck).

Anyway, I could go into great detail about the trials and tribulations of the last 24 hours, but the upshot is that they have increased his diuretics to get rid of some of the fluid around his lungs, and it seems to be working. Keep your fingers crossed that it continues to work. I think the increased fluid might also have been part of the reason why he's been so uncomfortable. After the Glenn surgery, babies tend to get headaches because after this surgery, blood from the upper part of the body flows back to the heart passively by gravity, and while the body is adjusting to this change, the fluid buildup in the head can cause significant pain. So it makes sense that if he had high fluid volume, that could exacerbate the pain. Of course, I just mentioned this to the nurse and she said she thought he was just fussy because he felt like he couldn't breathe because of the fluid around his lungs. At any rate, his sats are good now, and he is much more restful.

I have a feeling this is going to push back Magnus's discharge by at least a day, but I'm going to do what I can to talk them into letting him go tomorrow. He's still got his oxygen cannula turned up high, so he needs to be weaned off that, and they need to make sure he's doing OK with oral diuretics (he got both oral and IV diuretics last night).

4 comments:

  1. I'm sorry to hear about your night. It's so miserable when the baby is sick in the hospital and unhappy. It will be that much sweeter to be home all together, though. I hope it's soon.

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  2. Hey Jen and Iggy, so sorry to hear about the rough night. I hope the little guy will be feeling a bit better today and that you can all get home asap. Thinking of you all!

    Rachel B

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  3. Thinking of you guys...hope he's improving hour by hour! Annamarie

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  4. Thinking of all of you and hoping that things continue to get better today. We're sending all of our positive thoughts and best wishes your way.

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