Saturday, March 14, 2009

Saturday afternoon

First off, I apologize for not adding any blog updates yesteray. Everything has been going ok.....the motel does not have any wireless capabilites and we checked out of the room and put everything including the laptop in the car. Tim spent the night in ICU - they pulled his breathing tube about 7:30am on Friday. He was tired and raspy all day in the ICU. The plan was to move him to a regular room about 4 or 5 in the evening. Before they could move him, they generally pull most of the tubes and IV's. During surgery they put in a main IV port into his neck. When they went to pull it - it was stuck! They pulled and pulled and it would not come out. They called the surgeon - who came in to check. Fear was that the tube was being held in place by a stitch.....and it would take reopening the chest to undo the stitch - or possibly finding the area and cutting in to the upper chest area to release it. They got the x-rays from surgery and started looking at everything. After all it was Friday the 13th and something had to go wrong......I think they have 1 in about every several 1000 that have this problem. The nurse commented that the surgeon won't tell his secret, but he eventually placed his hand someplace on Tim's chest and pushed - and pulled the tube in the neck at the same time - and the tube magically released and came out! Phew!! That created about an hour or so set back in moving him to his room - they wanted to watch for bleeding and let Tim relax. About 9pm Friday evening, Tim was finally moved to his "step=down" room from ICU. He will stay in this room until he is released to go home. We left about 10:30 to get some dinner and go back to a motel to sleep. Saturday morning, we got up and checked out of the motel again. Mike decided he would head on home today and Matt and Kate will leave later this evening. I will move back into the hospital room. Scott's girlfriend, Megan, is from aabout 40 minutes from Cleveland - so they went to spend the night and some time with her parents.
Tim ate a pretty good breakfast and lunch. He is terribly tired - and needs some sleep. We all know that doesn't happen in a hospital! The nurses are currently attempting to find a place on his right arm for an IV. He has nothing in that arm they can find and he as been stuck so many times it is horrible! They don't want to use the left arm due to the clot. That is the only arm with decent veins - and now it is off limits... Tim still has his catheter and chest tube - so he's not very mobile, yet. Hopefully, more later!..................................

1 comment:

Van Neie said...

God Bless all of you! No one should have to go through all of this! Please let Tim know that we all are pulling for him and we need a baritone back in our quartet! We can all hope that this will be the last of the travails!