Friday

Dorothea is still pretty tired after surgery, but she opened her eyes a few times, and was responding to questions this morning.

Her hemoglobin had dropped this morning, along with her blood pressure. They gave her two units of blood during dialysis which helped her blood pressure tremendously. They also gave her a bag of plasma to help boost the blood factors. She did have a little bleeding overnight. It is possible that it was from bleeding that occurred prior to the surgery. The GI doctor was in this morning and let us know that this is the time when we wait and see. She believes that she took care of the problem in its entirety - the next few days will tell us.

She is back to just IV feeding so that her stomach and intestines have time to rest after surgery. It will be a few days most likely before they are feeding her through her stomach tube again.

Since she was sedated for surgery they needed to put her back on the ventilator, but hopefully today they will get her back on the oxygen shield.

She is receiving wonderful care from so many people. I am also so very thankful that Dad is there at the hopsital so much, he is able to provide so much "extra" help to the nursing staff to bridge the gap between all of the different nurses. He knows mom so well, and knows what works, what helps, what methods different nurses have used. The nurses seem to really appreicate the extra knowledge that he brings to the situation.