Bunn’s Prairie

All,

Before  I get into the Kaley update, I wanted to take a moment to say thank you to everyone who has called, written, posted, visited, performed, cooked, cleaned, and prayed for Kaley’s recovery.  Your efforts have been key to both Kaley’s recover and my ability to be there for Kaley on a daily and ongoing basis.  Kaley and I have gone through stretches like this before where she was in the hospital continuously for an extended period of time.  This time is different though.  Ordinarily Kaley and I would be there to support one another.  This time, the support is a one-way street from me, and all of us, to Kaley.  I sincerely appreciate that people have allowed me to make some withdrawals from them for support so I can continue to allow Kaley to make withdrawals from me.

Onto the update:

Kaley has been officially weaned off the resperator.  The removed the machine earlier this week.  She has been breathing on her own via the trache for about a week now.  She has the “trache dome” on which acts like a nose to humidify the air before it goes into her lungs.  Just like our noses do.  Speech therapy (ST) has been working with Kaley daily since Wednesday.  She hasn’t said anything as of yet despite appearing to mouth words occasionally.  The limiting factor her is she needs to clear her throat. Like all of us, we get fluid and crud that builds up on our vocal chords.  Normally when this happens we clear our throat and swallow.  Kaley isn’t doing this yet.   ST has been trying to encourage her to do so in a variaty of ways, but the best way is for her to do it on her own.  I believe Kaley’s neurological state is the limiting factor here.  She isn’t responding to all commands as yet. Once she demonstrates that she can and will clear her throat whenever she needs to, then we can have the voice adapter put on whenever we want.  Until then, it will only be put on when the ST is present.  The risk there is having stuff go into her lungs again and aspiration.  We don’t want that.

Kaley has new moon boots finally.  I’ve been complaining that the moon boots that the UofM provided her were way too big and were therefore ineffective.  I asked for a smaller size, possibly peds, they said it did not exist.  Once arriving at Regency, they ordered a smaller size right away. The new boots are much better.  Occupational therapy has started working on giving Kaley some basic instructions like, grab the wash cloth in front of you.  She not only did that, but then used it to wipe her face!  Also, OT placed a picture of Sasha in front of Kaley and one of our wedding pictures and told her to look at the cat, and then to look at the wedding picture, and she looked at the correct picture!  These are all wonderful small steps compared to where we were a week ago.

Kaley spends most of her time sleeping at this point, without the aide of medication.  Evidently patients recovering neurologically say that doing anything takes a tremendous amount of energy.  So Kaley needs her sleep.

Baby steps.

I finally spent a quality evening with Kaley. I don’t know what happened during the day, as the nurse was not very talkative and I didn’t ask any questions. However, I did see Kaley awake for a good hour hour two tonight. She did not mouth any words as described by other posters on this blog. She did however flash several smiles. I removed my necklace from around my neck tonight to show it to Kaley. She immediately grasped it and clenched it close. I thought that was pretty cool. Also after showing her L’il fuzz and he gave her a hug, she pursed her lips for a kiss. He, being the sensitive bear that he is (plus given his attachment to his bunny-bear mom) kissed her back. She then raised her am, apparently offering her arm-pit for him to snuggle into. He, of course, obliged.

Believe it or not, I am posting this from my new phone. Hopefully this will make it easier for me to post more frequent updates. Please see the comments to my previous post, I have not witnessed these improvements first hand and therefore find it difficult to post them.

Sorry, I haven’t updated this in a while, I’ve been insanely busy between Kaley and work.  The short update is that Kaley is stable and doing about as well as she was at Fairview.  I appriciate getting a second opinion on Kaley’s care at this point.  I am pretty skeptical about the quality of Kaley’s care in the ICU at Fairview.  Not the nurses mind you.

On Tuesday night after moving her, I got a big hug from Kaley!  She was half sleeping for most of the time we were there, but she finally woke up enough to recognize me and got a smile on her face and appeared to reach out to give me a hug.  I of course obliged.

Please find the new permanent links to maps and directions to Kaley at her current location on the right under the “pages” heading.