Long Day

I'm here in Rosina's room, she's down in surgery. They're giving her a tracheostomy which is a tube for breathing so they can take the other thing out of her throat. (fyi - a tracheotomy is the incision, a tracheostomy is the plastic tube) Once she has that, she can wake up and get reacquainted with the daylight without having the thing in her throat (which requires sedation). It's much easier for her and it's still attached to the ventilator if she needs it. They are also giving her a tube into her stomach so they can deliver food there directly instead of continuing the IV feeding. Both the ventilator and the IV feeding, along with other things, can take their toll after a while. Assuming these things are working out okay, then she can continue to recover from all this stuff!

Later - after getting home. The first thing they had to do today, which they were doing when I arrived, was give her a new catheter in her chest. She's getting a lot of stuff intravenously and some of it can't be mixed, so they needed some new lines; they added three. It's a minor surgery that they do there in the room. Her hands and wrists are a bit swollen so it's not good for an IV line. They temporarily put one in her toe! Crikey! Then she went down to surgery to get the "trach" and the PEG (percutaneous endoscopic gastrostomy) tube. It's quite a job getting that bed and all the IV stuff etc. out of the room. She was in surgery for an hour or so and then back up. A lot of people needed to hook up a lot of stuff. By the way, I am continually impressed by the level of care that she's receiving.

But after she came back they did a routine chest x-ray and saw that there was air in her chest that was pushing her lungs to the side - it was probably from getting the catheter - so they quickly had to do another procedure there in the room to get the air out, and some fluid as well. So she's got another tube in her, in her side. Now there are eight, total.

But it's good she has the tube out of her throat and that thing off her head that holds it in place. She'll start getting some solid/liquid food directly into her gut and they'll start letting her wake up again. Again, we are proceeding slowly and with caution to get the girl going. When they did the last procedure, I don't know what she's aware of seeing, but she stared in my eyes for a solid minute. Then she closed them. I like her eyes.


Thank you all for your help and good thoughts and visits and everything that's coming our way, we feel lucky to have so many people close to us. Now do me a favor and sing!

xo
ph