Day Two--Check!

I have great news to start off the evening tonight--Doug is OUT of the ICU!!! WOOHOO!!!! He is back on the 7th floor and in his own private room, thank goodness. This floor is much quieter, more private, and we have a wonderful night nurse named Laurie looking after Doug tonight.

Today was a great day for Doug. He had physical therapy this morning--poor thing the PTs came about 2 minutes after the nurses had gotten him out of bed and settled in his chair! He had to do some leg exercises with light weights, and then it was time for the walker! At that point Doug's dad and Elizabeth and Stazia were all there so I took that time to run down to the caf and get some food. when I got back upstairs, they told me the good news--Doug took a nice long walk with the walker today! About 80 steps!! For anyone unfamiliar with this surgery, that is a MONSTER number for day 2. The therapists even called him their "miracle child". well, we should have known since he started off the day by telling the nurse that she had put his chair too close to the bed and he wanted to do a few more steps to get to it, and she had to tell him no. Doug is doing the right things, and he's got great care with the nursing staff and his family and I making sure he doesn't push it too far to quickly.

So after PT, they gave doug some lovely Xanax to help him relax and get some rest. He then proceeded to get a little bit loopy from that! Probably that and the combo of massive amounts of pain meds have started to affect him a little bit. He was seeing some weird stuff, and he also swore he could hear music although there was none playing. He did say that the song was American Baby by Dave Matthews Band. Hey, if you are going to imagine music, might as well be GOOD music, right? He then conked out for a while and woke up just as I was drifting off a bit! (i took on the "burden" of sitting on the hospital bed while he was in the chair....and it was coooommmmmffffyyy.....). After he woke up I left the hospital for a bit to go on a shopping excursion with Stazia to get Doug some presents and then a stop at the Hope Lodge to change and get my overnight stuff together. That way he got to spend some time alone with his Dad and Elizabeth too which they needed too :).

When I got back to the hospital around 8 pm, Doug was in his new room! We were so happy--he was uncomfortable in the ICU--i had never been in one before and its a pretty tense area, very noisy, lots of poking and prodding, lots of machines, etc. We had some slight concerns about a couple of the day nurses but that was taken care of. Most of his care has been excellent though--his night nurses were all fantastic. So we gave Doug his presents--we went on kind of a spree at Best Buy! We got him three dvds he can watch when hes feeling a little bit more up to it, or for when he is recuperating at home, a new cd, and best of all----the preordered copy of Rock Band 2!! Our friends all know that Doug and I are addicted to Rock Band and we're excited about the new one! I think he was happy about it haha.

Doug's family left around 9 tonight and then Doug had to get all of his nighttime stuff done with the nurse (insulin, nutrition, checking the tubes and lines, etc) and then we just hung out and listened to a cd together while he fell asleep. He's sleeping now and hopefully will sleep through until 1 am when they come in to do vitals and blood sugar. Then he'll get a break until 6 am.

All in all, Doug is doing so well for being two days out of surgery. The tech (person who takes vital signs and things like that) that we have tonight is the same one that we had the night of his surgery, and when she saw him she broke into a HUGE grin and said that she couldn't believe how good he looked. Shes seen a lot of these patients, so she knows when someone looks good. He's still in a great state of mind, even with the continuing challenges of recovery that lay ahead. These last few days have been insane, I'm hoping that now we will settle into more of a routine (as routine as we can be in a hospital anyways) and i plan to start working again on Monday. I originally planned to start today, but as you can tell from my posts it was completely out of the question--my state of mind and sanity couldn't have taken it today, and there was a ton going on with the move and therapy and everything. Luckily I have a great team that I work on (they're reading this blog too so I have to do a "shoutout" haha) and my company has been wonderful and flexible with my schedule and i'll be working remotely for as long as is necessary.

Alright, time to pop on a movie and try to get some sleep.........theres a loud buzzing machine in the room (its a machine that acts as suction for Doug's central line--so a loud but necessary machine!) so once I get used to that i should be fine--I think everyone is still sleep deprived.

love you guys, I'll update tomorrow on our favorite patient!
Love, Lindsey