June 27, 2010

Sunday Stuff

As expected we had a non-productive Sunday today. We started off with a restless night for mom, dad and Tim that resulted in dad spending the second half of the night with Tim while mom caught up on some quality sleep in the hotel room. Tim needed to have some bloodwork drawn today, which as usual was a bit of a process. Not helping matters was that the person trying to draw the blood was unable to get a good stick and only being able to partially fill one of the two tubes they were supposed to.

During rounds we had a nurse practitioner provide us with some information that was not remotely helpful. She first indicated that a draining chest tube can potentially continue to drain for a number of months. When we informed her that this was not an option for us and asked if there was any way to get released to the care of a local doctor which she acted as if it was a preposterous suggestion and said they would never do that for someone with a chest tube. To top it off she altered the target numbers we've been hearing for the last 2 weeks of less than 20cc of output per shift to less than 16cc of output. That means instead of shooting for less than 60cc per day which we're getting close to we'd be looking for less than 48cc per day. All of this was rather discouraging as we're seeing Tim get more withdrawn with every passing day that we're not talking about getting home. We raised this concern with everyone that would listen and while they had some sympathy it didn't change their approach to his case at all.

Thankfully today's nurse practioner who leads the floor won't be on tomorrow so hopefully we'll be able to bend someone's ear tomorrow. We, of course, aren't trying to do anything that would be a danger to Tim but we do want to give him something to look forward to other than another dull day at the hospital. It didn't help that it was a rainy day today and there was even a tornado warning which drove all the patients on the floor out of their rooms and into the hallway for safety. We bucked the system and went to a lower floor and an interior room to have the lunch we'd just picked up instead of standing around sweating in the hallway with everyone else.

We did have a couple of quality hours of sleep in the late morning when we brought Tim back to the hotel again for a nap and then this afternoon we went up to the big play area when they were showing Princess and the Frog to enjoy the movie and some fresh popcorn.

Hopefully we'll get some more sleep tonight and more encouraging news tomorrow. Tim is getting stronger every day and while he may not want to he's able to walk a lot and has a regained a lot of strength.

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