Tuesday night update
Tuesday was certainly more of the same, and I keep telling myself that no news is good news. They changed Dad's bed--he got his roommate's bed which is one of the snazzy ones that move to prevent bedsores (apparently we were mistaken or misinformed before when we thought he already had one of these), and he got a shave (maybe they heard us discussing his beard?). The yellowness in his eyes is almost entirely gone. He was heavily sedated when I was in there for the 12:30 visit--much more asleep than I've seen him since just after the surgery. I was concerned about his very low blood pressure (average in the 50's, with the diastolic pressure particularly low) and his apparently shallow breathing. We asked about the low blood pressure and the nurse gave him more medication to increase it. Mom said that the pressure average was higher by the 8:30 visit, back into the 60's. I wasn't able to ask about the shallow breathing (when I say shallow, I'm basing that on the ventilator reading--the little red and greed LED's that rise and fall with each breath. Over the weekend they were hitting the 40% mark on most breaths; today they were about half that) but Mom did later in the day and was told that the lower percentage is good--they don't want it any higher than 40% and it has something to do with pressure on the lungs. So that was an improvement.
The nurses all say the same thing--he's holding steady and getting better. It's impossible for us to see the improvement, and that's just really hard. The most difficult thing for me (well, one of the most difficult) is watching other patients come and go on the hall--they get their bypass surgery and are out of the CICU a couple of days later. We are told that he is a long way from extubation.
There is a strange camaraderie among the long-term residents of the ICU waiting room. There are several of us who have been around more than a few days--the wife of Dad's roommate, the daughter of a woman who had kidney failure after her scheduled bypass, and the four children (and various others) of a woman whose colon punctured during a colonoscopy. This last family is just wonderful--four very close siblings, Mo the only daughter and her brothers Blaine, Norman (not his real name, but everyone calls him that!), and Mike. You can tell that they are as close a family as we are, and are SO supportive and loving with each other. Mo is almost always in the waiting room when I go in; I know she and her brothers regularly spend all night there. They tease each other and now us, and we've all gotten to know each other first through overhearing the other family's conversations and now through constant conversation. Everyone in that room is worried and stressed, but everyone is also amazingly supportive and friendly. There's nothing quite like a crisis to pull people together and allow them to show their true strengths. Having Mo and her brothers around makes me feel less alone in all of this. She makes that clear as well--when I had to leave this afternoon and Mom was going to be alone in the waiting room, Mo kept chiming in "she's not alone!"
The nurses all say the same thing--he's holding steady and getting better. It's impossible for us to see the improvement, and that's just really hard. The most difficult thing for me (well, one of the most difficult) is watching other patients come and go on the hall--they get their bypass surgery and are out of the CICU a couple of days later. We are told that he is a long way from extubation.
There is a strange camaraderie among the long-term residents of the ICU waiting room. There are several of us who have been around more than a few days--the wife of Dad's roommate, the daughter of a woman who had kidney failure after her scheduled bypass, and the four children (and various others) of a woman whose colon punctured during a colonoscopy. This last family is just wonderful--four very close siblings, Mo the only daughter and her brothers Blaine, Norman (not his real name, but everyone calls him that!), and Mike. You can tell that they are as close a family as we are, and are SO supportive and loving with each other. Mo is almost always in the waiting room when I go in; I know she and her brothers regularly spend all night there. They tease each other and now us, and we've all gotten to know each other first through overhearing the other family's conversations and now through constant conversation. Everyone in that room is worried and stressed, but everyone is also amazingly supportive and friendly. There's nothing quite like a crisis to pull people together and allow them to show their true strengths. Having Mo and her brothers around makes me feel less alone in all of this. She makes that clear as well--when I had to leave this afternoon and Mom was going to be alone in the waiting room, Mo kept chiming in "she's not alone!"
posted by Sarah @ 11:00 PM
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