PICU Update

On Tuesday, Charlotte was discharged from the NICU and sent to a floor for children with chronic medical needs. This way, if she is ever admitted to the hospital again, it will be the same team of doctors and nurses caring for her. Tuesday night was rough for her-- her fever spiked again, up to 39.7 C, and she went way up on her oxygen requirements. They stopped her feeds, placed her on IV nutrition, and took her for a chest xray. By Tuesday afternoon, we were mostly convinced that she had aspiration pneumonia, so antibiotics were changed and everything looked pretty good. Charlotte was still sick, but at least we had something to go on. Around 1:00 AM Thursday morning, Charlotte's condition set off an automatic call to the PICU. Her high heart rate, her temperature, her vital signs were enough to signal to the nurses and doctors that she needed some more help.

Charlotte was admitted to the PICU at CHOP. She was using a lot of energy to breathe, her heart rate was all over the place (she would brady one minute {drop her heart rate below 80} and then the next she would be well over 225), and she just generally did not look good. Her coloring was off, she wasn't waking up, and her fevers were still pretty high, even with Motrin and Tylenol.

By Thursday afternoon, Charlotte was looking better, but still not fantastic. The PICU doctors were concerned about some irregularities on her EKG, along with a viral infection that was in her blood. The fear was that this infection might have affected Charlotte's heart. An echo was done and we are still waiting for the results of that.

Otherwise, Charlotte seems to be doing better-- the antibiotics for the pneumonia are kicking in, and her fevers are down. Her blood work remains negative for any massive infection or obvious problem, so we're relieved by that. Just being in the PICU seems to be enough for Charlotte to get herself in gear. We don't have any results yet from the echo, but we should have those today. As long as everything on the echo is normal, we should be able to return to her "normal" floor of the hospital.

I wish I had more definitive news for everyone, but I will say this: On Tuesday/Wednesday, Charlotte looked pretty dang sick. But last night when I left the hospital, she looked good. She had much better coloring, her heart rate was much more even, her breathing was not nearly as labored, and even her fever seemed to subside for a bit.

We're still not sure who the shooter is, but it appears, for the moment, that we have dodged this bullet.