Charades and Pictionary

What is today? Saturday? My oh my, this week has been f-o-r-e-v-e-r! Don, Tony, AJ and Quinn took a much needed break and went golfing this morning. That was such a good thing for them to do, especially for Don. He's barely seen any other scenery except the inside of that hospital. I let Madison sleep in which was a treat for her as well. I went and "Beppe-sat" (she will get a kick out of that term some day) by myself. It was actually pretty quiet and peaceful, just her and I and her friend Vinnie, the ventilator, pushing air in and out.

Isy had a quiet morning and a pretty quiet afternoon today. In the morning they started to lighten up the sedating medication again (aka "the michael jackson medicine") and she gradually started to perk up again. The respiratory therapist came by about every 2 hours and put her through some testing to see if she might be able to tolerate breathing on her own. (We know she can breathe on her own... it's just whether or not she was ready to breathe on her own with all of that medicine working its way through her system). By 3:30 she had finally passed the test which meant that the ventilator is no longer doing the mechanical work for her. She was awake but sleepy, but would easily open her eyes and shake her head yes/no while answering questions or us. The tube is really bothersome now that she's awake. They talked about extubating her (taking it out) but she's never really gone very long with being awake without starting to bleed so she needs to be awake and moving a little bit before they feel confident enough to try and extubate. She's not too happy about this. She's played a good amount of charades with us, obviously unable to talk while trying to breathe through a "straw".... (just kidding, it's bigger than a straw, may be a small garden hose... but still!) Her wrists are also still restrained and only come up off the bed about 6 inches. She kept pointing her finger and twisting her wrist and for the life of us, we guessed everything we thought we could but couldn't figure out what she needed. I finally got a pen and paper and she wrote out 4 words for Tony, Madison and I. It was a little bit of Pictionary because she was writing without being able to look at the paper. She wrote "oxygen mask" and we figured out that she was trying to tell us that she wanted the tube out and wanted an oxygen mask on instead. We explained that she had to keep the tube in, in case she bleeds, so she will have a patent airway. She shook her head yes that she understood that. She then wrote the word "when"... when can the tube come out? I hated to tell her the truth... may be not until tomorrow (that "tomorrow" word felt so ugly when it was only 4pm). She seemed to accept that too although I could tell she was disappointed. The last word she wrote, Madison guessed first, "pray" which automatically made me cry because that is all we have been doing for 9 days now! Tony, Madison and I laid hands on her and prayed with her right then as well. I hope that brought a little comfort to her. We encouraged her to try to rest/sleep because that tube will drive her crazy. So first we are calling her name and telling her to wake up and now we are telling her to go back to sleep. Hahaha. She's probably one confused lady as to what we want her to do! It was so wonderful to have some interaction with her. She laughed when I told her that Q was beating everyone in Jocker (a card game) in the waiting room. She laughed when we started trying to guess her word that started with "p"... "Pakka? Poop? Popcorn?" Of course you can't hear her laughter but her body shakes like she's laughing. She shook her head that she was impressed that Madison was already on page 300-something of her book (she knows Madison isn't much of a reader). She smiled big as we told her we loved her. AJ asked if she was getting any medicine that suddenly makes her hear better. She's usually quite hard of hearing but now she's picking up on everything, even Don's voice out in the hallway. We absolutely can't wait to have Beppe back to her old self! Madison's working on that list for her... of things she's "going to tease Beppe about forever and ever." haha. Boy, it sure feels good to laugh again.

Once again I thank you for your heartfelt prayers. We are really in a critical time. Unfortunately Isy is going to be somewhat uncomfortable with this tube down her throat and awake, but its so important that she not have any bleeding before it can be taken out.