Baby Steps Forward

Just returned from the hospital, much snow has fallen in the last 24 hours and they say more is on it's way.  Andrea had a fairly uneventful day, after the excitement of the last few days with her cousin and no naps, today she was catnapping quite often for short times.  The stimulation of the last few days was good, it gives her goals to look forward to.  Even so she sat on the edge of her bed 3 times today  for 5, 15 and 3 minutes respectively, and was pain free after, also able to hold her head up better.  For a short while she sat up unaided.  Another good thing was that she had the speaker valve on at 9 AM today and they were planning to leave it on till midnight.  They started out with an average amount of oxygen support this morning and it was only one third of that when I left.  Tomorrow they will likely try her with a plugged trache and see how she manages with that.  The respiratory technician said it is actually harder to breathe with the trache capped than without the trache because that is an obstruction to breathe around when it is in place.  Her anti rejection meds are being given through the feeding tube orally again, they were intravenously till now.  After sitting up for 15 minutes this morning she asked for a reward, so I said I'd give her 20 dollars, she said no, she wanted a mouth swab.  She is very thirsty and begging to drink, but until her trache comes out and a swallow study is done that proves that swallowing works, she will have to go without drink.  She also has cabin fever, so the pump doctor said as soon as she was off dialysis and her trache capped he would get her bundled up and take her outside for fresh air.  She is also on intermittent dialysis now, meaning that from 8 PM till 8 AM she is dialysed but not during the daytime.  These are baby steps, but at least in the right direction, hopefully no more serious setbacks.  Hope I can get to the hospital in the morning with all the snow, I guess we should have our old 4 by 4 truck here now.

 

Goodnight, Maynard

 

(For those of you who don't know, Maynard wasn't kidding about "much snow"! We got around a foot, everythings plugged up! Just a little point of interest...)