Finally home after a long day at the hospital.

Well, because Amanda was up most of last night, she failed her morning attempt to get off of the ventilator.  They turned the settings down so that she could breathe on her own and she was just too whipped to keep up.  She will get another try tomorrow morning.  But the doc wanted her moving more and suggested she get up in a chair today – and Amanda vigorously shook her head “no no no” with the suggestion.  This here mom said ‘yes yes yes’ and with the help of three nurses, we got Amanda and her iv pump, feeding pump, ventilator tubes and all the other good stuff from bed to wheelchair.  Oh she looked like the cat had dragged her in.  The poor kid is bloated and has the worst case of bed head.  But she sat up in her chair for about two hours and was fairly chipper.  It used to be that when a patient was on a vent – they were stuck in bed.  The nurses were telling me that they are even walking vent patients in the halls now!

Now here’s more modern medicine for you.  It used to be that respiratory therapists did ‘percussion therapy’ on a patient that involved patting them on the chest and back in a specific way to loosen all those sticky chest secretions.  Well, now they have the ‘vest.’  After we got Amanda and all of her stuff back in bed, they wrapped the ‘vest’ around Amanda’s chest and secured it with velcro.  Then it got attached to the machine that ran the thing.  That vest inflated and started shaking Amanda around like an off-balance spinning load of laundry!  Alright, she didn’t spin, but you should have seen that girl shake!

So her x-ray today showed improvement and with all the moving around she did and her wild shake-rattle-and roll ride in the vest, let’s pray for an extubation tomorrow morning!  Oh – we need her to sleep well tonight, too, so hopefully all that activity tuckered her out – plus a dose of Benadryl for good sleepy measure.

btw – I have a sick daughter in St. Kitts, too – so a dose of prayers needed there too.

Thanks for all the care, concern, prayers, phone calls, texts, visits, and love coming from everybody.  Sorry if I don’t always respond in a timely manner, or even respond at all.  The fatigue is quite consuming.  You kind of keep going, pointing yourself in the direction you need to go, and just get things done.  You don’t stop to contemplate any of it because you might start crying and Lord knows that takes too much energy.

I am back on duty early tomorrow so Ted can work.  It’s amazing what a night’s sleep in a bed plus a morning hot shower and cup of coffee can do to reenergize a person!

Love and good health y’all.

just Laurel