Vent clinic update

Autumn was sick last week, running 99-103 temp for 3 days. It was all respiratory so I started her on some antibiotics & it did the trick. So glad our drs always make sure we have all the nebs we need so we don't have to take her in everytime she gets sick. Today she had vent clinic so I was curious to see how chest x-rays would look. They looked perfect!!! Yay! Her blood gas was perfect as well. We discussed her sleep study. She defintely still has severe central apnea (she averages 6 episodes every hour). The good news is she recovers on her own & we can continue to move down vent rates. At the study they had her on no rate but we know she needs some rate so we are going to keep her at 8 bpm. Her dr wants us to watch though if she is riding the vent or taking breaths in between. If she is riding the vent, we have to move the breath rate up again. This would be bad because she HATES having a breath rate & will pull her vemt off at night until we dial it down. He did change her i-time so the breath given by the vent will be a bit longer so hopefully a little bit longer breath would keep her from desatting when she has an episode but most episodes are mild & her sats do not even drop. We are also going to monitor her VTE (tidal volume exhale) for a couple of nights so he can see what needs to be adjusted. He may change either pressure support or pressure control settings so they will not bother her. We may have to end up stayong a night or 2 at the hospital for observation so we can get the setting just right for her but hopefully we can do it by us watching the rates at home & letting them know & they can adjust as needed. She had gained 4 lbs in 3 months!  They said it was a faster gain than they wanted but we are keeping her feeds the same & we return back in 3 more months.  So, overall everything seemed good at clinic.