High Heart Rate

Yesterday Alisha and I went to visit Dottie. She was all covered up to keep warm and quiet, so this is how we look at her when she's sleeping and they're trying to keep her calm:

As mentioned previously, Dottie has had a high heart rate (190-210 beats/minute) for the past few days. The doctors tried a transfusion on Sunday night to boost some of her blood counts, since they were thinking that lower oxygen in her blood was making her heart pump extra hard. The transfusion was able to get her back on room-quality air (21% oxygen), but her heart rate remained high, though slightly lower (in the 180's). Below I snapped a shot of the monitor. The green number is her heart rate (beats/minute), the blue number is her blood oxygen content (percentage), and the white number is the number of breaths she's taking (breaths/minute).

They are gradually increasing Dottie's food intake. Today she'll be starting on 3mL every 3 hours, with her intake increasing by 1mL every 2 days. So far our prayers have been answered, meaning that she's having good digestion results and is properly tolerating the food intake. Since the food intake is limited, they supplement her nutrition with these machines which feed her through her umbilical cord. The lower machine is feeding fats ("lipids") and the upper machine is feeding something called TPM (no idea what it is, but it's yellow liquid).

And for the full "just like I was there" experience, we snapped some pictures of decorations that they have in the hallway just outside the NICU visitor room.

I realize this is off-topic, but yesterday Alisha and I concluded that the "Close Door" button on an elevator does nothing and probably isn't even connected to anything. If you don't push the button, it waits and the doors close. If you push the button, it waits the same amount of time and the doors close. If you push the button 5 times, it waits the same amount of time and the doors close. I guess it's just a decorative button with no functional value.