Putting Her Foot Down

A lot has happened today.  It's been hard to keep up at times.  I rewrote one post this morning four times because the information I was getting was being updated or revised so fast.  Things have calmed down a little now.

Deb did get back to the ICU room around 15 minutes after I did.  She immediately looked a lot better - more awake and aware - than she did yesterday, but she hadn't had as much of the 'magic button' painkiller yet.  Even after, she has been more lucid than she was overnight or this morning.

We got a visit late afternoon by Dr. Paige and PA Jackie.  They explained that when they went back in they discovered that one of the artery/vein pairs had somehow gotten moved around enough to cause a kink of sorts.  The blood was getting through the artery due to higher pressure in, but the vein wasn't draining effectively.  But they were able to rework everything and then close it back up, and the color and ultrasound Doppler indicated that flow was as it should be (we could hear that it wasn't quite right before).  I think I finally let out that breath I've been holding in all morning and half of the afternoon.

Jackie came back again later and we'll also see her in the morning, but Deb was alert enough to discuss a Greek restaurant in Jackie's neighborhood that she needs to try (and I might have mentioned Tavern Law as well).  I can tell that Jackie is more pleased with Deb's condition now, too.

But the post's title alludes to something that happened later.  Around 1800 Eileen (the day nurse in ICU) came in and started helping Deb get ready to move over to the chair for a while (which entailed Deb straightening up enough to stand!) followed another 15 or so minutes later by Deb actually getting up and walking (with a walker, of course) all the way out of the room and across the hall to the nurses' station and back.  That, my friends, is a huge step (even if taken - as it was - with baby-steps).  Not exactly a walk in the park, but at the high end of the medical team's expectations for her.  She returned to the chair for a while and was planning on getting back in the bed in 20 minutes when the nurses came for the next monitoring.  That was when I left to come home, though, so I missed that part, but I was there for the most important part.

I've finished my dinner and our dog Betty has finished hers, so now I owe her some walk and play time before I head back to the hospital for the night.  I won't post again tonight, but will post in the morning once we've seen Jackie (we may not see Dr. Paige tomorrow) and gotten a progress update.

But things are looking much better now than they did this morning.

[Whew]