Annie's Apple Daddy

Talk about your long days! Annie, Rose and I got to the hospital at 8:00 am. Jerid was scheduled for his bronch at 7:30. Of course when we got there, he hadn't even been brought down from his room yet.

So, as usual, we waited and waited and waited. This time in the Surgical Family Lounge. It's a pretty nice place with comfortable seating and big TVs. And there's a huge TV screen on the wall that flips through all of the patients that are in surgery at the time. It tells you what time they started, finished and where they're currently at. It saves the lady at the desk a lot of hassle I'm sure. Everyone just sits around staring at the wall.

Not Annie though. I think someone put espresso in her bottle this morning because she was wild today. After waiting patiently for the first 5 minutes, she was out the door. I walked behind her as she ran up and down the halls greeting every nurse, doctor, patient and visitor we saw. It's like she feeds off of smiles. The bigger smile she gets out of people, the happier she is. So she ran, and ran and ran.

She got tired of running finally at 12:00 so we ate lunch. We went back to the waiting area and ran some more. Finally they were done. Back up to ICU to wait some more for the doctor to come see us.

Here's what happened in the O.R: The stent that Jerid has had for a long time in the right lung was completely cracked down the middle, so they replaced it with a silicone one. No problem.

The left lung was a little trickier. The doc said he tried for almost an hour to get a silicone stent in, but just couldn't. But he did get 2 metal ones in nicely. This isn't the best scenario, because now Jerid will have to have it replaced within 2 weeks. Still, at least they're in there. And the best part was that Jerid was able to get right off the respirator.

When I next saw Jerid, he was awake, but couldn't open his eyes. He had on an oxygen mask and was having a really hard time coming out of the anesthesia. So I sat with him and talked to him and finally he opened his eyes. He was really thirsty, but couldn't have anything to drink yet. He's just so weak from the past 2 weeks that this was a hard procedure to recover from.

He is recovering though. I could go through all of the numbers and levels and medications that I talked to the doctors about today, but quite frankly, I'm too tired. So I'll just say that we have some work to do, but hopefully things will progress well from here. Jerid may even get moved out of the ICU tomorrow or Saturday. That'll be really nice.

When we left, after 10 hours of being at the hospital today, Jerid was only on 50% oxygen and feeling much better. He was eating ice chips and dosing.

I see from the number of comments that Annie's post was enjoyed by all. Maybe she should start writing every night. And yes, I let her have some candy last night. 2 M&Ms and a Teddy Graham. What? She didn't even know what those bright packages were. She just thought people were giving her funny looking blocks or something. Maybe tomorrow I'll let her have a Twizzler. She made a lot of new friends today and a woman even shared half of a fruit salad with her. That child is something else. I'd be lost without her.

Love to you all. Nigh night.