Update on Grace, Friday, Aug 20

Friday. Latest update 9:00 PM.

7:30 AM - Sorry - I don't have another Grace visit to report yet, so if that's what you are looking for, then I'll have it here late this morning. I hope.

This quick update is to tell you that I've now uploaded the photos from Shelley's baby shower last Sunday to a better photo sharing site. You can see the photos here.

I had a report that someone couldn't get to the Walgreen's site without creating an account. Fooey. I don't want you to have to do that, so I've uploaded all 112 photos to this other site. On this new upload site (Fotki), you can see and enlarge individual photos, download any photo you like, or order prints. I've ordered prints from this site before, and they are excellent quality and I haven't found any better prices anywhere. Oops. I just checked, and they've raised their prices. They used to be 9 cents a print, now they're 15 cents. Oh, well. The reason I uploaded to Walgreen's first is that I could get prints from Walgreen's that same day and take the prints to Grace. She was very glad to see them.

Also, in case you missed it in a previous posting, Grace is receiving visitors now. Please see the main UPDATES page for more information.

Grace's grandson Keith should be well outside of Atlanta by now, headed this way. We expect him to arrive about noon. Grace will be delighted to see him, for sure.

I'll post an update soon as I can after my next visit to Grace, or whenever anything else of note occurs.

Have a delightful and blessed day!

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11:55 AM - I first visited Grace this morning about 10:30. When I walked in the door, she threw both her arms up in the air in greeting and had a giant smile on her face.

It was good to see her awake and alert and in good spirits.

I told her I had just had breakfast with my friend I usually meet for lunch on Fridays, that we changed it to breakfast today because Keith was arriving about noon.

She said, "Is he here yet?" and I answered that I had just talked to him on the phone, and he was due here right on time, in about an hour and a half from right now. She accepted that, but it was obvious she's excited about him coming to see her.

I told her I'd had breakfast at Jo's Diner, which is one of her favorite places for breakfast. She said, "Did you get a blueberry muffin?" She loves those, and the blueberry pancakes, at Jo's Diner.

I said, "No, but I looked at those, and I looked at the blueberry pancakes, too. But I was good, and I got two eggs, scrambled with cheese and mushrooms." She nodded at that. I continued, "It was very good, you would have liked it. But I also got a sausage patty, and I know you would have preferred bacon."

I brandished some papers I'd brought. "I've printed out some emails people have sent. Would you like me to read them to you now?" She said she'd like that, so I read out three emails to her. These are emails you have sent, and she really does enjoy hearing from you, even though she can't answer you quite yet. Maybe soon I'll take my laptop computer to her room for a visit, and I'll let her dictate some emails to send to you, or something to tell all of you here on the blog.

Grace said that when I saw Jan, to tell her that Grace is ready for a book! We check out large-print books from the library for Grace, and she very much enjoys reading them. It's a great step forward for Grace to be ready to start reading again.

We talked some more, and Grace told me the doctor said that today they could disconnect even more stuff from her, because she's impoving so much. Wonderful!

I told her that Jan had enough time on her lunch break today to try to make it down to visit, so don't be surprised if Jan shows up shortly after I leave, but I had to go home soon because Keith is arriving and I wanted to be there to meet him.

She seemed in the best spirits this visit than at any time I've seen her since she woke from the anesthesia. Praise the Lord!

That's it for this update. I'll post more after I get back from visiting her with Keith.

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4:00 PM - About noon, Jan called me on her way back to work from visiting Grace.

She told me she'd given Grace a library book, and while she was there, they brought Grace some lunch. The lunch was fried catfish, tater tots, and cole slaw, which looked very good, and probably would be appetizing for someone in normal condition, but Grace just couldn't take any of it. Jan asked if I could bring Grace some soup and maybe a piece of toast. I said sure.

Keith arrived here at the house a bit before 12:30. I had the soup mostly heated up, and told him I was making some Cracker Barrel bread toast for Grace, and that I was probably going to have some also, and did he want some? He said sure! So I made three pieces of toast, with butter and cherry butter on it, and we ate our slices while I put the soup into a traveling mug with a lid.

I gathered up the SIX (count 'em SIX) cards that had arrived for Grace in today's mail, asked Keith to carry the food for Grace, then Keith and Bill and I piled into the car and headed to the hospital.

When we arrived, Grace was overjoyed to see Keith, receiving and delivering BIG hugs. After a bit of chatter, we gave Grace the soup and the toast. On the way into the hospital, I told Keith that Grace would probably eat only about a third of each of them.

She totally surprised me. She ate ALL the toast, and almost ALL the soup! She said it was really good, and it was enough for her.

Hmm.

This told me that the reason she didn't eat her hospital lunch had nothing to do with her appetite. Her appetite was fine, because she just polished off enough food for just about anyone wanting a small meal. I decided at that time that I needed to talk to someone about what they were feeding her.

When lunch (the second one, the REAL one) was over, I opened the mail, and Keith read the cards to Grace.

We had gotten through most of them when the respiratory therapist arrived, and we stopped reading for a bit while Grace went through that therapy. The therapy consists of a tube about 1" in diameter hooked up to a faucet thing on the wall, probably oxygen, with the other end hooked up to a breathing tube that has a bottle of liquid something attached also, and Grace is supposed to breathe through that tube until all the liquid is gone. Is that a nebulizer? Maybe so.

After the breathing therapy, we finished reading the cards, then Keith told Grace all about his daughter Madison starting kindergarten. Grace was totally delighted to hear all this about her first great grandchild.

Following this, Keith showed Grace a huge pile of pictures from Boone, some of them dating back to Grace's last visit there last May, and Grace just ate it up. She was awake and alert and sharp for the entire time, making comments about the pictures that revealed her ever-increasing mental acuity.

While this was going on, I asked a staffer if I could talk to the dietician, who showed up in the room within ten minutes (EXCELLENT!). I explained to the dietician about how even though the meals looked great, and would probably be fine for any of us healthy people, Grace couldn't eat any of it. But it couldn't be her appetite, because I had brought her tomato soup and toast with cherry butter, and that disappeared like a pizza at a kids' party. So the dietician said she was on regular meals right now, but what they'd do was they would put Grace on regular meals, but with chopped meat for a day and see how she did, and if she still couldn't take that, then they would put her on "mechanical soft" meals. I checked with Grace if that seemed okay, and she agreed it seemed so. The dietician was very pleasant and seemed motivated to do the best she could for Grace; one more good mark for that hospital.

But I'm not so sure. I mean, if she didn't want to eat any of the fried catfish and tater tots and cole slaw today, what makes them think she'd eat it if they fed her the same stuff, only chopped up? I was thinking they'd be better off feeding her more nutritious food, like soups and fresh cooked vegetables and fresh fruits, but hey, I'm not the dietitician.

We'll just see if what she gets over the next day or two is any better, and if Grace is still having trouble with it, then we will either start bringing in some food ourselves or we'll talk to the dietician again.

Or Both.

Not long after I had the chat with the dietician, Keith and Grace finished going through the stack of pictures, and Grace said she was ready to take a nap.

So we wound things up there and came on back to the house.

Bill and I both agreed that today, Grace is even more alert and "back with us" than yesterday, and yesterday was better than the day before.

This is very encouraging, but we still need to continue our prayers for her.

We'll go back and visit her again this evening, and I'll post more after that.

Take care, all.

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9:00 PM - How about this!! FOUR updates in one day! Woo-hoo!

When Jan got home from work today, we took about 20 minutes to let her unwind, then we - all four of us - piled in the car and went to visit Grace again.

She was so happy to see us all. On our previous visit, I had brought her cell phone to her. Now she picked up her cell phone and Jan asked, "Were you able to make a call?" and Grace shook her head and said no.

We offered to help and asked who she wanted to call. She said, "Pat." So I set up her phone to dial and gave it to her, saying, "Just push the green button."

But handing her the phone didn't work. First, the phone is so small, and the buttons are so small, it's even difficult for ME to make out what's on them. I'm not sure that Grace could tell which button was "the green button," or even that it was a button at all separate from the rest of the phone. Because as you probably know, the buttons aren't really buttons at all, but just areas on the face of the phone that you have to mash until you feel the click, while being careful not to mash the neighboring button/area by mistake. Which is easy to do because these buttons are so small and close together.

Second, Grace is still somewhat in the fog of the remnants of the anesthesia, and possibly of a pain pill on top of that. With such a small phone as this, and being in that semi fog, Grace had a tendency to hold the phone not by the edges, as we really need to so we can avoid accidentally pushing a button, but with fingers around it, usually with a thumb or finger right on the buttons, inadvertently pressing some of them.

Combining all these circumstances, and a modern cell phone just isn't a good thing for this situation. I think Grace would be much better off with a good old standard landline phone, one that fits comfortably in the hand, and stays connected until you physically hang it up.

I'm going to see about that tomorrow.

But for now, the cell phone is what she has, so I went ahead and dialed her friend Pat for her, handed her the phone, and she enjoyed a good conversation with her friend. This is the first time she's talked to anyone except family since her accident.

Being as how it was so late in the day, Grace was obviously tired, having multiple indefinable aches and pains that we just couldn't help with.

We asked what she had for dinner, and her face lit up. "You're not going to believe it," she exclaimed. "They gave me a tuna salad sandwich on Cracker Barrel bread!" Grace does enjoy a good tuna salad. We asked if she ate it all, and she replied, "Some of it."

We were happy that she did eat, and that she got something she enjoyed.

She said, "They were supposed to come for me, and I'm tired of waiting. I don't know when they're going to come. They said they would."

Bill asked, "You mean with the wheelchair?" They had told us yesterday that they were going to put her in a wheelchair and take her down the hall to a physical therapy room.

Grace said, "Yes. They said they would come today."

I looked at the clock. It was almost 7:00 PM. Bill said, "I'll go ask the nurse. We'll see if they can bring you the wheelchair."

He left, but was back shortly. "There aren't any nurses at the station. They must be with patients."

I said, "Since it's nearly 7 at night, they might have decided to do it tomorrow, or maybe Monday."

Grace looked like she didn't want to believe that, but didn't have much choice.

Then we checked to see what was going to be on TV tonight, and didn't find anything at all that was interesting.

I told her what some of the options were and asked if she wanted to watch any of them.

She said, "No, I think I'll just read my book tonight."

So we tucked her in, she collected some lovin', we bid her good night, and departed.

There were a few episodes of confusion tonight, but I attribute those to the combination of the remnants of anesthesia, the pain pill she'd had, and exhaustion from the physical, mental, emotional, and pain ordeals she's been through today.

We were encouraged that she wanted to read her book, as that exhibits a good level of interest in things that are "back to normal," and we all agreed she probably wouldn't read for very long before nodding off tonight.

We continue to pray for her recovery.

More updates tomorrow.

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