Hopefully Happy New Year

Dad, Dana and I have arrived at the hospital and are sitting with Mom at her bedside. Not at all what I thought we would be doing on New Years Day, that's for sure. The nurse has been successful in getting Mom to eat most of her dinner and breakfast, which is great, and her last blood sugar was 145. We really, really like this nurse a lot. She is very kind, but also firm and I think that is kind of what Mom needs right now. Yesterday the EEG was completed, and although (to our great frustration and annoyance) the doctor did not come specifically to talk to us about the results, they have ordered her seizure medication to be tapered off which means they probably found no more seizure activity in her scan. Thank you God! We are still waiting for her admitting doctor to come in for a family consult where we can ask questions about where he thinks she is now, and what her future treatment will be. The nurse took out her nasal cannula today for oxygen and was encouraged that she seemed to be just fine without it.

The last we heard from the nurse, it was mentioned that her admitting doctor thinks going straight from ICU to the acute rehab center would be the best things for Mom since she has lost so much muscle mass already. Their insurance carrier has already approved this as well. The facility would be in Escondido at the sister hospital to Pomerado, and would include physical therapy, conditioning, diet and general transitioning to help get her ready to go home. She has to be deemed medically stable before this can even be considered, but the social worker here on the ICU floor mentioned yesterday that there was a bed opening up on Friday that she could potentially have if her doctor thought she was ready. We will know more about that when we get to talk to him. The lack of open communication between doctors and family/patient is really frustrating to us.

In all honesty, we feel like getting her out of this hospital would be the best thing for her. Getting her muscles and strength going again is going to be key, and I think just getting out of the doom and gloom of the ICU will be golden. They have her on so much pain medication and sedatives, we really won't have a chance to get a feel about what her state of mind is until she gets off some of them. All she really wants to do now is sleep, so its really hard to figure out how her brain is firing just yet.

As we start this new year, I need to tell you (and my sister has stated it as well) how profoundly grateful and humbled we all have been to the response for our Mom. Every one of your comments, calls, prayers and just your love in general has touched us all much more than you know. We could not have made it this far without you and we all really look forward to being able to show Mom the emails and posts from all of you so she can know just how loved she is. Happy New Year to you all and thanks again for all your support!

Love,

Tom, Dana and Sara
(Glenn, DJ, Alex and Matt too)