I am home for a quick shower before heading back to the hospital.  It was my turn on duty last night.  For those of you who don’t know, when you are intubated and a machine is breathing for you, you can’t swallow.  Saliva builds up in your mouth and the only way out is to have it suctioned out or it drips out your mouth and down your face.  I think I was sucking or wiping drool every 15 minutes last night.  Sleep?  What’s that?   sigh

So besides the saliva mopping, there was a constant, steady stream of people in the room all night.  A hospital is not a place you go to for rest.  Vitals every hour, glucose checks, respiratory treatments, another chest x-ray.  And then there are all the blood draws.  I don’t know what they are going to do.  For those of you who know, she has a p.i.c.c. line in her right arm – but they could not thread it in the whole way and it is only half threaded.  Can’t pull blood from it.  So Amanda has this wonderful vein in her left hand that now looks like one of those fine mist garden hoses with needle holes all up and down it.  I don’t know what they are going to do when that vein finally cries ‘uncle’.

Amanda continues to try to communicate with hand signals and when we don’t get what she’s waving about, she gets all red in the face and very frustrated.  (Imagine not letting Amanda talk!  It’s been 2 days now.)  So we hold a clipboard for her and she writes what she is thinking (when she is strong enough).  She was waving wildly after the nurse did some care with her and when she was done writing on the clipboard, she had written “Thank you”.  In the middle of the night last night she waved for the clipboard and wrote “Why did this happen?”

Must get back to the hospital so Ted can get some work done – he is off to Mansfield, Ohio.  He slept at home last night, but not very well he says.  Pray for safe and awake driving for him please.  And pray we can lose some tubes today for Amanda.

just Laurel