VERY Good Day!

Hope you are all safe at home on this cold night.  Just returned from Andrea's room, she was still awake but hopefully will soon sleep as she has not slept today at all or very little at best.  I think today was possibly the best day she has had since the heart mate II was installed at the end of November.  She sat on the edge of the bed for 15 minutes this morning, did PT and occupational therapy came in and played 4 games of Uno with her, she won half of them.  In the afternoon they came in with a Stryker bed, like a transport stretcher, flat bed that goes up into a sitting position very easily.  Andrea had understood that she would be able to get out of her room and go down the hall and out of the ward but they were not ready to get out yet, she was very disappointed to not leave the room.  She sat up in the Stryker chair for a half hour.  Hopefully tomorrow she can leave the ward for a short while.  She is slowly gaining strength, obvious when they do PT with her.  She seems to not have much trouble with her speaker valve and is on it from early till night.  Actually tonight they were going to try another fitting on her trache and see if she can manage to sleep with it all night.  She did not manage with her trache capped very well, so when the doctor heard about it he suggested changing it to a smaller one.  When she is on the ventilator or the speaker valve there is a cuff that they inflate to seal it to the windpipe.  When they cap the trache they deflate the cuff via a small line, and the thinking is that the trache is too large and that even with the cuff deflated there is not enough room around it to breathe normally.  If they can get that sorted out, and she can go 72 hours with it capped successfully, then they will consider removing the trache, but we don't expect that anytime very soon.

 

Good night to you all, Maynard