Hi all,
Sorry to have been out of touch for a while.
It's been a busy week (has it been a week since I last
wrote?) and I've been getting home late and too tired
to write. Unfortunately neither the hospital nor the
rehab center have WiFi so even if I take my laptop, I
can't do email there. I can read email on my cell
phone through mobile email so I've read everything
you've written me (except stuff with attachments which
you can't read on the phone) but it's too hard to type
more one word answers on the phone -- and the
verbosity queen can't do one word answers!
Dad is still in ICU. He's relatively stable but
he's got a lot of problems and it seems he was a LOT
sicker to begin with that any of us realized. We had
a BIG meeting with all the doctors Wednesday. Nine
doctors met me for two and a half hours to explain
everything. He has an infection and something called
an ileus that's causing problems in the GI tract.
The infection isn't from the gall bladder so he
doesn't need GB surgery. I had questioned whether
this hospital was the best place for him and
considered moving him elsewhere but after this meeting
I'm very imrpressed with these doctors. They've now
called in a liver specialist to see him (today I
think), so we'll know more after that. The white
count is coming down so he seems to be improving.
He's still on dialysis and he hates that. He's also
depressed and keeps trying to refuse things (even
X-rays and breathing treatments) so I have to override
him and insist on stuff. Who wouldn't be depressed
in his situation? But he is improving, thank God!
Mom is doing much better. She had a couple
really good days this week. She pretty much passed
the swallow test. Basically there's nothing impaired
in her swallowing mechasisms....she can eat and drink
everything. The only problem is that after 8-10 bites
she gets tired and then stops thinking about chewing
and swallowing and has problems. But her swallowing
ability was not impaired by the stroke (which the
first hospital had said it was). Once she gets some
energy back she should be able to eat and drink
normally. Hurray!
Actually tiredness is her biggest problem and they
say that's pretty normal in stroke victims. A couple
days she's gone 4 hours and more on CPAP (breathing on
her own) but she can't do it every day yet. On the
days she was alert she talked very intelligently
during speech therapy (when she was able to talk).
She told us that her "peripheral vision was better."
Her speech is a little slow and slurred, but it's
there. The speech therapist, Joan, was like "Wow!
There are healthy people who couldn't come up with
those words! She's smart!" I asked Joan about a
talking trache and she says mom won't need it because
she's going to get off the vent and get to something
called a trache collar which will be oxygen connected
to the trache and then she can talk all the time.
Sounds good to me!
Basically I think with mom it's just going to take
time. And we have to pray she can manage not to get
any infections or anything that could derail her
recovery, because that's common when you have all
these tubes in you.
Pop is another story because we have to get him
over the infections and then off the vent. So I still
need lots of prayers.
Thanks!
Love,
Susan
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