Update on Grace, Saturday, Aug 7

It's Saturday morning as I write this, and we hope Grace is still sleeping in her recovery.

If it's news to you that Grace is in the hospital, please scroll down and read the earlier blog article first.

Because of the blood thinners Grace has been taking, Plavix and an aspirin-a-day, there were quite a few complications with her stay and repair in the hospital.

I'll refer to these blood-thinners as BTs from here on.

First, because of the BTs, they admitted her directly into the ICU, where she stayed until her surgery, and then came back to after.

Second, because of the BTs, where she fell on her face bruised horribly, and this concerned the hospital people, and was another reason she was placed into the ICU.

Third, because of the BTs, the lacerations (cuts) she suffered in her mouth, both on the outside and inside of the lower lip, and where she bit her tongue, didn't stop bleeding for more than six hours. She fell right about 10AM, and it wasn't until well after 4PM that the bleeding stopped.

Fifth, because of the facial swelling - her nose and lower lip in particular, she wasn't able to breathe through her nose until the bleeding began to abate, after 4PM. This, combined with the bleeding in the mouth, made it horribly difficult for her to breathe, as she kept having to mop out her mouth.

We felt so bad for her, but all we could do was keep her supplied with tissues and keep a trash can close to hand.

Once she began to settle down, after 4PM on Wednesday, she finally began to be able to get some rest, but the beeping machines in the ICU kept waking her up. Once, during the night, the beep startled her so much she twitched her broken leg, which woke her totally for a while.

Sixth, because of the BTs, the surgeons did not want to operate to fix the break right away. One does not perform an operation on someone who can't stop bleeding. They had to wait for the BTs in her system to dissipate before they would do the surgery.

This meant that all day Thursday she just remained in the ICU, with only palliative treatment, and no repairs.

Thursday afternoon, they said it was possible they'd do the repairs tomorrow, depending on the results of the clotting factor tests.

Thursday night, when we were there for the final visit of the day (more on that in a sec), the nurse told us to call her in the morning, because they would do the clotting factor tests about 4AM so the results would be ready for the surgeon's evaluation when he came in.

Speaking of the final visit of the day, the ICU has restrictive visiting rules. The sign outside the door says visiting hours are on the even-numbered hours only, between 10AM and 10PM, except for 6PM, only one visitor at a time, and only for 5 minutes unless approved by the charge nurse. Fortunately, the only thing they've been sticky about is getting in earlier than the 10AM or 8PM visiting hours. There has never been a problem with both Jan and me going in there, or with us staying a half hour or more.

So yesterday morning, Friday, we called the nurse about 6AM, and she said the clotting factors looked good, and she thought they would schedule Grace for surgery about 9AM that day. Great!

Since visiting hours didn't start until 10AM, we figured we'd just wait until she was out of surgery and in a recovery room, and go for the noon visiting hours.

But when we got there just after noon, Grace still hadn't gone into surgery, and hadn't had any word at all about what was going on. Well, fooey.

We stayed with her a while, and finally attending-doctor-number-seven (yes, she's had a BUNCH of attending doctors) came to see her, a Dr. Hobgood from Mississippi Sports Medicine (they specialize in orthopedics and joints, and that's where the doctor who replaced Grace's right hip has his main practice) came to see her. He said she looked good for surgery late this afternoon. He had to do his clinicals first, then he'd be ready for her surgery.

When grace first arrived at the hospital ER, they took an X-ray of her leg and a CAT scan of her head. The X-ray showed the right femur was broken just above the knee but below the new artificial hip, which was not damaged in any way (praise the Lord!); the CAT scan of her head showed that neither her nose nor any other bones in her head were broken (praise the Lord again!). She also had not broken any teeth, despite landing partially on her face. Praise the Lord for that also!

However, on Friday morning, they had to take Grace for another CAT scan, this time of her knee, because the orthopedist didn't think the X-ray showed enough.

When the doctor was there with us on Friday telling us he could do the surgery late that afternoon, he said he had looked at that new CAT scan of the knee, and her knee was pretty badly shattered, like a jigsaw puzzle. But not to worry, he could put it back together, and he was well-rested and ready to go.

I think a shudder of concern went through us at that time, but all we could do at this point was to pray.

Later that afternoon, I had an appointment with a web design client, so Jan stayed at the hospital, and told me Grace went into surgery right about 4PM.

I finished my appointment and rejoined Jan at the hospital, where we waited in the surgical waiting room, and where someone from the operating room would call us about every 45 minutes or so with a progress report. That was a wonderful thing for us who were waiting. All the reports were that things were going well, just as expected, and the final report was that they were done, all went well, and they were closing and would be moving her back into the ICU when finished.

Grace was in that surgery for nearly four hours.

Jan and I prayed our gratitude that things went well and that Grace slept through the whole thing.

We waited nearly another hour in the waiting room before Grace was situated in the ICU again, and the attending nurse was able to give us the latest information, which is that Grace would remain sedated and intubated all night long, so she could get over the main part of the after-surgery effects, and that they would probably take out the tube in the morning.

She also said that once they took out the tube and Grace was stabilized, they would probably be moving her to a regular ward and out of the ICU.

So that's the status as of 08:48 on Saturday, August 7, 2010. Please check back here for more updates on Grace's condition, and please continue your prayers for her rapid and as-comfortable-as-possible recovery.

And feel free to share the address of this blog (b.snicko.com) with anyone who you think might also want to stay updated with Grace's condition.

Bless you all.