It is still Wednesday somewhere...

You know the song it is 5:00 somewhere... well I am very late with my Wednesday posting... but I am sure it is still Wednesday somewhere in this world!:) My apologies to Dorothea's faithful daily followers.

Wednesday was a gorgeous day...high of 79, blue skies, a gentle wind. I so wish that I could capture some in a bottle and let it loose in her room - that would surely make her feel a little bit better. Seeing the blue sky through a window, and hearing us talk about how nice it feels outside is just not the same as feeling it yourself.

Dorothea was a bit blue herself yesterday. On most days I find myself chatting away and telling her all about everything, family, friends, news, funny stories... just chatting to entertain her basically. Yesterday was different. She was very tired - in and out of sleep every few minutes while I was there. And when she was awake she did not appear to want the silly chit chat that I bring. She turned away the Occupation Therapist yesterday...she just wanted her to raise her hands, but she refused. She lacks the energy at this point. She can do it, and sometimes does do it spontaneously on her own, but she did not want to do it at that time.

She seems uncomfortable, tries to stretch her legs and back a little bit and get in a different position. The staff changes her position quite often really, but 24 hours a day is just way too much for the body to be in bed. Her sores and her stiffness make her quite uncomfortable, along with going back in forth being hot and then cold.

The doctors attempted to raise her level of feeding - and that was unsuccessful - she was retaining it in her stomach, it was not able to move through her system. However, they acknowledge that she is not getting enough nutrition, so they have now decided to go ahead with the TPN IV feeding along with the peg tube feeding through her stomach. This will create more fluid to be removed through dialysis, but this way she will get a lot more nutrition hopefully.

She was on CPAP on the vent again yesterday, and seemed to be doing well with it. Hopefully she was on it most of the day. I left around 2pm yesterday, so I do not have anything to report after that.

Apparently she had thrown up two times over night Tuesday night, so that may have affected her energy level on Wednesday. She threw up once when they were cleaning the inside of her mouth, and once when they were cleaning her trach - so Harold thinks that both instances may have been caused by her gag reflex.

Don and I are heading up to the hospital now - I promise to blog again later today!