Unexpected Change

JW was having a tough time keeping his sats up this morning. He really needed suctioning, but he's been really sensitive to it. So they were going to pretty much leave him alone today. I dozed off sometime after noon and woke up to a nurse, the respiratory therapist and a doctor in the room, and 2 docs standing at the door. JW's sats were around 80. They were discussing turning him to his tummy. They decided it was worth the risk of turning off the vent and bagging him for a few minutes to suction him and listen to his lungs. It's difficult to really listen to his lungs when he's on the high frequency vent because you pretty much only hear the vent. (It's noise!) So now with 3 docs, 2 nurses, and the RT in the room, they went for it. They started bagging him and his sats went up! The high frequency vent tends to push all the gunk to the outer limits of the lungs and over time makes it
more difficult to adaquately ventilate, especially when it's harder to suction on that vent. They all made the split second decision to take him off the high frequency vent and put him on the conventional vent. It took a few minutes, and one more nurse, to get the new vent set up and him switched over. It took a while for his sats to come back up buts he's recovered and sitting pretty in the low 90s now. He's supposed to get turned to his belly later today which I'm sure he'll love since he's a belly sleeper.