Grandma update 4

As of Sunday night, this is Marie's status. Today for the first time, she was given something to drink besides small amounts of ice-chips and water. She chose cranberry juice. She was allowed to drink 1 ounce (this is about the size of a Sacrament paper cup) of juice each hour, sipping it through the hour. Not much, but it is a start.

Marie still has a great deal of abdominal pain, which (just my opinion) may be keeping her from faster recuperation, because when she is supposed to move this or that, or to stand up and walk about the room, etc., she hesitates because it seems to hurt her a great deal. She is still taking pain medication for this, but it doesn't always seem to be very effective.

Her nights are also a bit rough. One of our daughters has been staying with her in the hospital for the last 3 nights, to help out when Marie asks for something, etc. They don't HAVE to be there, but they WANT to be.

I understand that tomorrow (Monday) they will try giving her some clear bouillon soup to drink, and see how it goes. Basically, they are trying to "kick-start" her stomach and intestines so they will resume the work that was basically stopped by the infection and subsequent surgery.

The doctor said that she might be able to go home in another week or so, "depending". She does breathing exercises once an hour, breathing into a plastic device that gives her a challenge to try to take fuller breaths, and get the lungs working well. This is necessary to reduce the possibility of pneumonia.

I guess I'm a little impatient. Things basically seem to be going along okay -- we do believe that she is coming along slowly. It's just that I personally would like to see more rapid and more complete progress. Right now, the abdominal pain seems to inhibit much of Marie would be doing "if it didn't hurt so much".

Marie was moved (Friday, I believe it was) to a post-surgical hospital room. This is sort-of halfway between the I.C.U. and a regular hospital room. That is, she gets more care and attention from more people than she would get in a regular hospital ward, but not nearly as much as she had in ICU. For the time being, visitors are basically just family, the bishop and the Relief Society president.

She has a phone in her room, but she gets so tired so easily that I am not passing out the number just yet. Maybe in a few days, when she starts to feel better, and begins to walk about a bit in the hospital. No offense, but she dozes a lot during the day and that is probably excellent for her. I think she needs her rest, and would hate for her sleep to be interrupted too much.

Evidently this will be a long recovery and rehabilitation for Marie. As I reported previously, Marie has a colostomy, the purpose of which is to give the part of her colon that had the bowel perforation last Tuesday, a chance to rest and to heal. (My gosh, has it only been 5 days so far? In many ways it seems to have been going on for weeks!) Then, in 6 to 8 months if all goes well, they will do "elective surgery" to remove the colostomy and put back her colon the way it normally is. Of course, that means another surgery, and another recovery.

It seems like a long road, but so far so good, as they say. If I seem a little depressed, I'm probably not really! I'm a little tired tonight, been up and down emotionally so often these last 5 days, loss of sleep, our six children coming into town, etc., that some days I don't know which way is up.

I would prefer communications to be via email, because I can write-up a detailed explanation of her current situation, as I am doing in this email, and then copy it to interested parties. Because of my extreme deafness, even with hearing aids I am basically unable to decipher phone-calls that are left on our answering machine. So if you leave me phone messages, you probably won't get an answer until I can get somebody to listen to the message with me and tell me what it says. Sorry about that, but profound deafness is no fun for ME, either!

Tracy Whitt has graciously agreed to handle local inquiries (that is, in Raleigh and area) about Marie's condition. We are grateful to her for this. Her phone number is 919-801-3766 (her cell phone). When I have any additional news -- either good or bad -- I will send out another email to everybody.

We are so thankful and appreciative for your interest and concern. Please forgive me for this rather formal way of explaining Marie's status! Thanks,
Bill Houghtaling