Thursday

Surgery was postponed till about 3pm. I have had a couple of people ask why the valve has to be removed. The ulcerations are at the very top of the large intestine, and apparently on the valve as well, so they need to be able to remove that section and bring the small and large intestine together.

It is very important that they get this bleeding to stop. Since she has been in the hospital (not incuding the bypass surgery itself) she has been given 15 units of blood. An average human has 8-10 pints of blood in the entire body.

She dangled on the edge of her bed for a short time this morning, and then they configured her bed into a chair position so she rested in a seated position for quite a while.

I was there when the speech therapist came by today and I realized that she is the mother of one of Brooklyn's good friends... small world - I had no idea she was her therapist! Yesterday they gave Dorothea some ice chips to see how she would do with swallowing. Unfortunately it did not go too well, she was not able to swallow them and choked on them a little bit. After this surgery she will need a little time to recover and get the sedation out of her system, then they can start again.

She is still draining quite a bit from the chest tube, so I don't think that will come out today. She will have dialysis in the morning, although she will not have much fluid for them to take since she they cut off her feeding yesterday afternoon after deciding to do this surgery.