Today they came in and let us know that he will undergo surgery for the orthopeadic part of reconstructing his knees in 7-10 days. They are hoping to take him to the rehabilitation wing tomorrow.
The must frustrating part of all of this is the different "teams" of doctors here that seem to talk a lot, but never really talk to each other. There's the vascular team, the ortho team, the rehab team and the trama team. And none of them give us the same information. One will say he will be in rehab next week, one will say tomorrow, one will say 7-10 days so we take what they have to say in stride and wait to hear the next "update." We all understand what it means to be a teaching hospital and we are all glad that they can have this hands on experience, but when a mass of 10 people come into his room every few hours, it's exhausting. Enough about that...
The physical therapists came in this morning and let him sit on the edge of the bed for a few minutes and had his feet almost touching the ground. This, they say, will be good for when he is able to get in a wheel chair because his body will be used to sitting up again.
They did an x-ray of his chest today to rule out pneumonia and the aides weren't really gentle so that caused a lot of pain for him. They decided that there is some fluid hanging out in his lungs, but no pneumonia. He has a contraption that he has to blow into slowly 10 times every hour that is supposed to help prevent pneumonia and help him to use all of his lung capacity. He's been dilligent with it so that's good.
His medicine is making him really hot so he's been sweating a lot. We put him in some t-shirts to help keep him cool but it doesn't seem to be working that much.
They fitted him with some specialty "boots" today that will help his feet to stay straight. They had started to droop a bit, just naturally going toward the bed. These will also help to keep the muscles active.
You can also see the wonderful red rubber bands that we have to leave on for two hours, then take off for two hours. They had to customize these to his feet so they took 2 1/2 hours to make using 160 degree water to mold the material to fit his foot.
The best thing that he has received so far is this brace that fits around his torso.
He has said that this will be the "secret" to moving around because it takes the pressure off of his back and allows him to keep his hip, back and legs in line and out of pain. He really dreaded putting it on in the beginning, but once they had it fitted on his body, he said it releaved a lot of the back pain so that's a blessing!
I forgot to mention yesterday that it was mom and dad's 29th wedding anniversary! What a way to spend it in the hospital, right? :) I think at this point, they are just thankful that they can spend it together.
We've received some beautiful flowers the past couple of days. Here's some pictures:
Cut flowers from Melissa & Darren for their anniversary, a dish garden from the Quality Management Team at Randolph Hospital.
The flower arrangement is from mom's boss Sherry for their anniversary and the lily is from Barbara Bennett. Thank you all for your kindness and generosity!
Thank you to everyone that has called, written, visited. It has all been good for his moral and good to keep us occupied. We are doing good and couldn't do this without y'all! Keep coming back for more updates and have a Happy Fourth of July!
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