Day 4 of recovery

7/4/14/

Day 4 of recovery

Alexa is doing fantastic still although she had a pretty hard night.  I actually wasn’t with her, Ty stayed this time while I went to the RMH & tried to sleep.  I didn’t actually get a very good night sleep though, I woke up at 3 AM worrying about her & just got up & paid some bills.  About an hr later I was able to go back to sleep after reading an article in the Ensign.  I woke up again about 7 & went down to do our laundry & decided I might as well work out while waiting since the gym is next to the laundry rm.  Since it is the 4^th there was no free shuttle running so I drove the car over to the hospital & Ty met me in front & he drove it back so he could shower & nap.  He said Alexa was up to go to the bathroom about every 2 hrs the whole night & in a lot of pain.  He looked beat!  She looked pretty tired too when I got up there.  I took one of her favorite blankets up there for her that I had freshly laundered & that seemed to make her very happy.  She was still having very loose stool & I was really happy to hear they had stopped the stool softeners & Miralax finally.  They still hadn’t gotten the culture back so the staff was still putting on their protective gear to enter the room.  Dr. C came in & the nurse told him that she had put some medicine into Alexa’s feeding tube & it had backed up a bit so he wanted her to go to x-ray to make sure it was in the right place, going into her sml intestine & not her stomach.  He also went on about how pleased he was again.  The nurse she had last night said that she has been a nurse for at least 30 TP/AIT patients & has seriously NEVER seen anyone do so much so quickly as Alexa is doing!!  She said, “Seriously, I’m not just saying that, she is doing so great!!”  She was an Asian nurse & really OCD.  Alexa’s cords were really, really tangled up, as you can probably tell by the pics.  Well, she decided 1^st thing that she was going to get them all straightened out & fixed them all & put labels on all of them.  Ty said she was constantly going & going all night long.  She also found out that the little ball of medicine that goes into the pain block on her back had been clamped on both sides & she didn’t know how long it had been clamped.  I suppose that the nurse before had mistakenly clamped it.  That explained why Alexa had suddenly been complaining about every single little thing coming out of or into her stomach.  They have started giving her Oxycodone in her feeding tube & transition her off of the morphine since she has been getting more & more itchy.  Dr. C says the best thing for her pain control other than that now will be distractions like movies, computer, games, etc.  I am hoping that we will be able to do some face time or skyping soon with some of you, hopefully that will help too.  We also had the nurse order this blow up thing that we can put in bed with her & I can wash her hair in it.  I’m sure if you know Alexa you can imagine how thrilled she was about that, haha!!  Well, this is long enough.  She is doing good.  She walked this morn before I got here & sat in a chair for about 45 min till she got nauseated & then PT came & had her walk a ½ lap around the floor, which was very, very good.  I couldn’t get pics since I was helping her & Ty wasn’t here.  She is supposed to walk 2 more times today so I will try to get a video.    

Now we are trying to get settled down for bed & every little tiny thing is bothering her!  We have to make sure there is absolutely no wrinkle at all under her & every single cord has to be in the exact spot it should be.  EVERYTHING WAS BOTHERING HER!!!  Finally I had her put a Disney show on to get her mind off of things & the nurse gave her any meds she could.  Her C-Diff culture came back negative, surprise-surprise!  Also the cloudiness is clearing up in the other drain!!  She was able to get a ½ lap around the floor in 4 times today but we were not able to see any fireworks from here.  We were able to skype with the kids though.  They were all at our house having a party, except Tiff & Scott, they went camping with his fam.  I think she really enjoyed talking to everyone till she got to hurting too bad.  They say after the 4^th day it will get better so hopefully we are thru the worst part!!!