Intubated

The past 24 hours has been nothing short of a nightmare. Adrienne was doing okay on BiPAP yesterday and they were getting ready for her chemo. She had to get a 6 hour infusion of sodium bicarbonate so chemo was supposed to start around 7 pm. Late in the afternoon, she woke up and tried to take the BiPAP mask off, and when she did, she turned blue within seconds. One of the nurses held the mask to her face and the decision was made to intubate. We made sure she could still get chemo while intubated; otherwise, we wouldn't have done it. Her pulmonologist (bless his heart) came from his home on a Saturday night to do the procedure. The whole thing took about 20 minutes but it took until this morning to get her stabilized. Her BPs have been all over the place, she was bleeding from her stomach and lungs, and her heart rate was very high. She got two units of platelets last night and two units of whole blood this morning and we haven't seen any more bleeding.

This morning, her ICU/chemo nurse came in just for her and she got her chemo. The first two were fine but her heart rate rose a lot for the Doxil. It went back to normal after the infusion was done. Her BPs are still a bit all over the place but they have lots of meds for that and are watching her closely. Her oxygen sats are good and the ventilator isn't even very high (70?).

Now on to the fun stuff. Keeping her sedated has been a challenge. Before the intubation, her big concern was being awake and feeling it. She was asleep for that part but since then, she keeps waking up. They have her on a propofol drip, a morphine drip, and now added an ativan drip this morning. No one can believe that such a little girl (all 93 pounds of her) needs so much sedation. All these years of procedures and medications has led her to build up a huge tolerance. She was really awake this morning, which frankly, scared the crap out of me. After a bit, she started writing on a pad of paper, most of which I couldn't read, but I got the gist. Her mouth was too dry. She wanted her head raised. She wanted to make sure that the premeds for her chemo were done correctly. She asked if I had talked to the docs (she saw them but didn't remember). She even asked me to turn the TV on. Still Adrienne, thank goodness.

Curt is with Adrienne now while I came home for a shower. I've been washing my hair in the sink and taking sponge baths all week. She's stable right now and we can only hope and pray that the chemo works. We should know in a day or two if it's having any effect.