July 8

I visited Mom yesterday and she couldn't be better considering all she's been through. Luckily for her, she doesn't remember the vast majority of it... we may all end up with much worse memories than her about this entire fiasco.b Kim and Dad visited her today.

She's doing so great that they're talking about moving her to a "normal" hospital room on Monday. She was eating, YES EATING, although it was all liquidous. The docs deflated the balloon that is used to help the vent because she wasn't using it. While she was on the lowest setting for the vent the previous evening for sleeping, she never used it. (It was in kick-in-when-necessary-mode.) She may not ever need it again, we'll have to wait and see. She asked to sit up at the side of the bed and did so for a long time after the nurse helped her to get in that position. She is fully alert, understands everything, is smiling, laughing, and try to communicate. The problem is that the trach is still in and it's not a talking type of trach so she can't communicate very well. She is so sick of spelling out letters by pointing to the alphabet that she's stopped doing it.

Open issues:

• She has some blood in her stomach that is from a nose bleed deep in her nose but is also possibly from irritation from the tubes that were in her throat and lungs -- or at least that's what I took from the conversation with the nurse.
• She is very, very week. She can't write, get up, move, etc. She will require a lot of PT and OT which should start any day now.
• Her kidneys are up and down. They don't know if they'll ever be the same but as Kimmy said, in the scheme of things, dialysis is better than the alternative that we were facing.

Visiting her:
I will visit Mom on Monday and take Dad on Thursday after his doctor appointment then again on Saturday. I don't know when anyone else is vesting her. If you go, please take Dad with you.