Wednesday, July 21, 2010

All in all this has been a pretty good day. Kathy had a talk with our friends Kat and Tom Fashinell, cardiologist and nurse and owners of Echo Chalet. What a satisfying feeling to air our concerns and have them tell us that it sounds like all is perfectly on track with the protacal they would approve of. We feel so fortunate that Sutter Medical Center has such state of the art equipment, topnotch doctors and the best performing nurses we have ever encountered. These nurses are universally humane, thoughtful and really know their business. Skip is watched by at least one nurse 24/7 because he is being administered so many meds, feeding tube, respiratory aid and particularly tubes to and from an amazing dialysis machine that must be responded to any time there is movement by Skip's body and for many other reasons. Bells are going off here and there and these pros know what buttons to push and what to type in to each screen to set it all right. Wife and daughter have developed very warm and appreciative feelings for two of these nurses in particular. Kathy, a day nurse who really knows her stuff after 40 years of nursing, and Bill, a night nurse who is also highly competent and concerned with Skip's comfort. I must mention the first two nurses who admitted him last Friday. Joycelyn and Rebecca welcomed us into the ICU and went out of their way to explain everything they were doing and planned to do. Chris, in that unit answered all your calls until we set up the blog and never complained.

Yesterday and today our granddaughter Elena along with her cousin Leah, have been making all sorts of parts for origami healing balls under Elena's knowing guidance. Elena is our Queen of Origami and does something suitable for any occasion. Eventually, when Skip is taken off the sedative, he is going to wake up to a well ornamented room.

The good news medically for today is that Skip's platelet count almost doubled since yesterday. That is something the disease doctor was worried about, so we're quite excited to have that improvement. He opened one eye almost a quarter and moved his mouth this evening and you could see that he wanted to express himself. We've been told by all that this will be a very slow process so we're preparing ourselves for ups and downs and a slow journey to wellness. We can't even begin to tell you how much all of you emails have meant to us. We'll save them and present them to Skip when he's up and reading. Thank you one and all from the bottom of our hearts.