Monday, July 4, 2011

Steady as she goes

Posted Jun 21, 2011 4:20pm

Sarah is adapting to her new environment quite well. She is still exhausting herself by doing the little things, but that is a positive step as well. She spent almost 3 hours off the ventilator this morning as she was taken for a video swallowing test. I asked if she wanted to post it to you tube, but the silence that followed was deafening. She did, however, pass with flying colors, which is good because as she stood up at the edge of bed her feeding tube slid straight up through her nose and onto the floor. No pull, no catch, just 'shluuup' there it went! (Well, that was easy to remove. Much better than the catheter!)

While not exactly what everyone had in mind-- her comment was, "well it was starting to hurt, and now it will be easier to swallow." Which says a lot considering she was obsessively counting calories since last fall for the opposite reason that others count them.

When they took the ventilator off, they 'corked' the trach and she was able to speak. I think her voice even surprised her at first. It was nice to hear her talking, though it was a bit shaky at first.

We found out that she will most likely remain here for a while and they will work on strength and managing until the transplant. I think the doc was trying to boost her spirits when said she might even be able to go home with a portable vent-- but I think it scared the crap out of her instead. She saw her transplant position evaporate just like that. But it wasn't so, he just wanted to give her a glimmer of hope-- guess that backfired!

I'm headed up to visit her in a bit, and I will try to post again later.

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