Night Shift - Aria MacDonald

Night Shift

30 Dec at 7:00 am by Hamish MacDonald

Well I’ve just finished the first night shift we have done with Aria in PICU since she came in on Sunday. We have been staying late and coming in early since then but we haven’t been brave enough to stay overnight because of how terribly she was sleeping at home and the added interruptions of PICU life. However given the improvement she has shown with her breathing, and the need for us to enforce wearing her Bipap mask, I decided to stay the night and see how she was doing for myself.

Turns out she is doing pretty solidly. Aria got to sleep about 9.30pm despite cries of “not tired, not go sleep” up to the moments before she fell asleep, and slept through till about 5.30am. The only times she woke during the night were when the nurse or tech or respiratory therapist came in to bother her for something, and after each of these interruptions she fell straight back to sleep which was really great.

The big issue for the team at the moment is a steady deterioration of Aria’s blood gas levels. Her pH levels were going down and her co2 levels were going up which is not a good thing. Good news on that front is that we are thinking the Bipap machine is helping her as we took a gas after she had a 2 hour nap yesterday using it and it came back much improved. I am eagerly waiting for this mornings gas to come back so we can see if it worked the trick overnight too.

She is still having a couple of headaches a day, so we still would like to know what is causing that too.

All in all, I think Aria’s mood has improved and energy level increased these last few days which is a relief. We are still waiting for word on the sleep study but given her improvement the urgency isn’t so great.

Anyway, I think Aria is starting to doze off in her chair so its back to bed time for her.