The dance

While we are more understanding of the ups and downs of recovery, it still sucks. It is just a delicate balance of medications that is constantly changing and evolving based on her reactions to them. Anesthesia causes nausea, which made her not be able to keep down food at first, which means they give her morphine instead of an oral pain med, which causes nausea. So they give her a stomach calming agent so she can get down food, which causes constipation, which causes her to not be able to keep down food. And oh yeah, the oral pain meds they are now able to give her (basically percoset)? They make her nauseous too. But she needs something stronger than tylenol because of her surgery incisions. Round two: her surgery causes her to put on excess fluid on her body, which causes her to get fluid in her lungs, which makes her panic that she is not able to breathe well. Which makes her throw up. So they give her lasix to shed the fluid (which has been starting to work). Which, wait for it...can make her nauseous. What else? Her blood was a bit acidotic so they gave her saline with sodium bicarbonate in it. Now she has too much sodium bicarbonate. And the doctors are concerned that she is not eating or sleeping well. Anyone have any thoughts on why that may be?

Brian earned his dad of the year stripes this trip because every time he stays over at the hospital with her (we alternate nights), she has a horrible night. The first night was getting extabated and just general waking up from surgery crappiness. Last night was can't eat, can't poop, can't sleep freakouts every hour or so.

With all this said, we do think she's getting there. Slow overall forward progress each day. The surgeon came today to check her wound and the stitches are holding strong. Hallelujah! Now we just need to practice our dance moves a bit more...