Days 5 & 6

Saturday (Day 5)

Today was a productive day.  Sometime in the wee hours of  the morning Grace got to have her Art line (IV in the arterial vein) taken out.  She also came off of the Nitrous Oxide and the High Flow oxygen.  Later in the morning she got her chest tube and another IV taken out.  Whoo Hoo!  Shortly after that she was moved over to the step down unit, also know as 7 North.  Once settled here she got to get out of bed more freely and walked around.  Blowing bubbles was also a big part of her recovery.  It helped refill her collapsed lung from surgery.  So every so often we got out the bubbles and Grace had to see how many she could blow. 

Grandpa Truhe came by with Miranda, Colette and Adam.  Grace was so excited to see them.  We all spent some time together in the room then Daddy took them to the All Star room (a video game and computer playroom for big kids).  Miranda spent her time on facebook while AJ and Coco played video games.  The kids stayed until about 4:30 or so then Dave took them home.   Grace and I were on our own for the night.  It was another long night.  Nothing too awful happened, it was just a long night.  Grace didn’t sleep, I didn’t sleep and  Grace  did not seem to click well with her night nurse; so that made everything a little worse. 

Sunday (Day 6)

Again, sometime in the wee hours of the morning the nurse told us that the doc’s wanted another set of labs.  Grace still had one IV left so I’d hoped they could get the blood from that; but of course her last IV was no longer any good and they took it out.  That meant another stick – which ended up being four sticks and they still didn’t get it.  UGHH!  7:00am rolled around and that’s shift change!  Hooray!  Grace got Nurse Keegan today (she also had her on Saturday).  I noticed the doctors in rounds but no one came to talk to us which made me worry.  When they have good news like “ your going home today” they usually tell you right away.  A few hours later I still hadn't heard anything.  Grace and I took a walk to the fish room and ran into one of the cardiologists who told us that she was going to do an ECHO on Grace and if all looked good we would be on our way home!  It was close to noon when she finally got the ECHO (things tend to happen slowly in the hospital).  Two hours later we got the okay to go home!  I think it was another hour or so before we were actually out the door. 

LOL  Would you believe it?  I actually forgot to take a photo of the front of the hospital AGAIN.  Three years now I have been meaning to get a shot of the front of the hospital with the sign for her scrapbook and every time we are there I forget.  I will have another chance next month when we take her for her pacemaker check.  Lets hope I remember this time.  If not, does anyone reading have one?  Can you email it to me?  LOL

Now that we are back at home Grace and I have been resting and we have been trying to keep her form overdoing it.  We had a follow up  visit with her cardiologist, Dr. Cooper, he is happy with her progress but her pressures are still high.  Plans to go to my dad’s cabin this summer will have to wait.  Maybe next year.  She will get checked again in a few months.  Boy wouldn’t it be great if we could just pick up the cabin and move it to the beach???  :)

Life at home has been a bit crazy.  We came home to learn that Dave's former employer dropped us from the health plan after promising to keep us on for a while.  His old boss said not to worry that the COBRA would pick it up, but Kaiser has been calling with a different story.  Then we get news that there is MORE soccer drama with Miranda’s soccer league.   Well, I’m not going to spend too much time worrying about this stressful stuff that I really can’t do much about.  The timing of it all stinks.   Blah, Blah, Blah… enough about that…

Hopefully I will have time to upload and post the rest of  our hospital photos later today.

Thank you all for all of your kind words, prayers and help while we were going through this stressful time.  We have a few more weeks of recovery but hope to be back to normal soon.

Blessings,

Jackie