photo credit: alonso.romero via photopin cc
Yes, we are all smiling. Smokey is improving hourly, so much so that Younger Son went back to work today and only stopped in at the hospital during his lunch break, and Elder Son and I drove back to Wisconsin for an overnight to see the dogs and check the mail and for me to get some more clean clothes :-)
Thank you all for your good thoughts and wishes and emails. It all helped me in ways I don't even understand myself. For those of you who reminded me to take care of myself, I am. Without even consciously thinking about it, my self-care plan was to keep to my normal sleep schedule. No sleeping in a chair next to Smokey's hospital bed for days at a time. ES kept giving me a hard time about how late I would get to the hospital in the morning -- 10:00 is apparently late in the medical world -- but I refused to set an alarm for myself. I suck at sleep deprivation. So with at least eight hours every night I am maintaining just fine :-)
Smokey was moved from the ICU to a stepdown bed this afternoon. The latter is a bed in a unit with a higher patient-to-nurse ratio than the ICU but lower than a regular unit; a kind of transition unit. Unlike the first couple days when he had more tubes and wires coming out of him than I could count, he now has two IVs that are not attached to anything, used when the nurse(s) need to give him an injection; a nasal cannula giving him some extra oxygen; a finger oximeter to measure his oxygen saturation; and a heart monitor in the pocket of his gown that is connected to leads stuck to his chest. (I knew you wanted all the gory details.) His mental state is nearly normal -- kind of like if he were just really tired. Which he probably is.
He went for his first walk today, with the physical therapist. He also had his first sort-of-solid food -- cream of mushroom soup, vanilla pudding, orange sherbet, some crackers. His major complaint is that his sternum and ribs are extremely sore from the CPR. That makes it painful to move in bed or to transition from lying down to sitting on the edge of the bed or vice versa. Opioids make him nauseous, but the medical staff has found the exact right balance of pain medication and anti-nausea drugs so he is (relatively) comfortable.
If his vital signs continue to move toward stability as they have been doing he may come home this weekend. ES has booked a flight back to NYC on Saturday, but paid the extra $20 for cancellation insurance just in case.
Again, thank you all. I cannot begin to say how much you have helped.
