A few breathing problems

Good Morning,

It seems Eric had a little bit of trouble breathing early this morning. His oxygen levels remained fine in his blood, but his carbon dioxide levels were too high. Since CO2 is part of the acid base regulation, his blood pH dropped as well. The doctors said that he was starting to fight the ventilator a bit, which caused him to not breathe out as much as he was supposed to. In order to correct this, several things changed. They already have him on a lot of sedatives (he is a big guy), so they decided to put him on some medicine to temporarily paralyze him. This allowed the ventilator to take complete control and return his CO2 to normal levels. They also added a few electrodes to his forehead to monitor his level of sedation. This all happened around 2-3 am. At 7:30 this morning, they said they are planning to ween him off of the paralytic medicine to see if he will breath normally again. The doctors think that his pH drop was only a brief reaction to his combined problem of fighting the ventilator and his dialysis machine going in and out all night. Like I said, they are planning to ween him off of the paralytic, and continue to drop his oxygen levels on the ventilator (they bumped it up to 80% when they were having the ventilator problems). His current ventilator setttings are: 60% O2, PEEP 5 cm H2O, and respiratory rate 36 breaths/min. His oxgyen saturation remains around 99 - 100%. We have yet to see the full range of doctors this morning, so hopefully we'll be able get a few more questions answered.

Love,
Melissa