Thursday afternoon

The Physical Therapists came today and had mom "dangle" her feet over the edge of the bed for 7-8 minutes. They also loosened her torso up a bit. Harold said that after they did that her respiration was better and she drained a lot of fluid off of her lungs (through the chest tube). PT will definitely be a huge help in Dorothea's recovery.

As I mentioned earlier today Dorothea was having some difficulty breathing. They went ahead and put her back on the ventilator early this afternoon. It was a relief to see her come back to a restful breathing pattern and be able to rest. They set the machine to do 100% of the work, and let her just rest. When I left, the plan was to have her on the machine for 3 hours, and then try the oxygen shield again and see if she could handle it without difficulty. I believe they are going to try a more gradual approach now - she had been on the oxygen shield for about 36 hours and it was just too much for her at this point.

Dr Miller spent a good amount of time in the room with us talking over the situation, it was very nice. The longer he stayed and the more we talked through things, he came up with a possible solution to explain what we were seeing. Yesterday they began to feed her through the PEG(stomach tube), and she is also still being fed intravenously. Her carbohydrate intake had dramatically increased. Apparently when our bodies convert carbohydates to sugar, carbon dioxide is released. So Dorothea has all this new CO2 being released, that she needs to expel. So her body is working really hard to expel all of it - and breathing very quickly and labored. The Dr. decreased her food intake and is expecting her breathing to become easier within 8-12 hours. I really hope he is right. Tomorrow morning will be dialysis time again, which will drain her even more. So it would be really nice if she could at least breathe easily!

They will be putting in a new port for the dialysis. The shunt she has now is on the side of her neck. They want to move it away from the trachea tube (to prevent infection) so it will be placed in her upper chest. This will now allow her to have more movement in her neck which will be good.

Please continue to pray for Dorothea, Harold, and all of the staff involved in her care. Thank you for your continued support!