On Christmas Day, Arden's blood pressure began falling. Despite fluid boluses, her pressure could not be maintained at a safe level and the ICU doctors were called. They came to our floor and looked at Arden, and agreed that she probably needed to come to their floor for medicine drips to increase her blood pressure.
Arden's parents were not fond of this idea; they had seen what she looked like the first time she went to the ICU. Compared to then, when their daughter had been on the brink of death, she probably did appear much better. But despite how far she had come in just a few months, Arden was still infected and ill; so to the ICU she went.
Medicine drips were started: vasopressors. 'Pressors (as they're called), maintain a high enough blood pressure to ensure that all organs are perfused when a patient is too sick to maintain a normal pressure on their own. These medicine drips, plus antiobiotics, keep modern people alive who otherwise would have died of sepsis in days past.
Praise the Lord for modern medicine.
Arden had a shaky time, but survived Christmas. The next morning, she was sent down to radiology for a CT scan to look for abcesses or other sources of her sepsis/low pressure.
When she came back up to the ICU, her heart stopped beating.
Arden's parents were in the room while the ICU doctors began coding their daughter. Chest compressions, bag valve mask breathing, epinephrine administration- finally they brought Arden back. Her heart beat returned after about thirty minutes of CPR.
But this child was on a precipice. Despite going back up on all her medicine drips, the infection was overwhelming. Arden's heart stopped beating over and over that afternoon, and she was coded for hours before her parents finally asked to let her go.
She died on Sunday afternoon, December 26th.
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