A Little Bit of Rollercoaster

After a pretty fair start yesterday, and a spirit lifting (although exhausting) walk up and down the hall, there was a little slump later in the day.  She is in this window of time where the feared vasospasms could occur and to fight that possiblity the Dr's are doing a few things.  One of which is to flood her system with fluids, big bags taken through one of the IV's.  Yesterday afternoon some of it got into her lung area (they determined this with a chest x-ray) and caused several hours of distress and labored breathing , especially while reclined, which is pretty much all of the tme.  After some consultation they decided to hold on the fluids for a while to see if the lung fluid would clear - which it eventually did, and then started her back with more fluids.  It has not built up again so she is now breathing much easier and things are better overall.

Today when I arrived I could see she was doing well and she looked good.  They had taken the staples out  (I think Theresa counted them the other day and there were 33) and her long incision also looks pretty good.  Then the best thing happened; I got a call from our longtime Catholic priest friend Father John, who lives in Michigan.  He is Laura's godfather, and has renewed our wedding vows on both our 30th and 40th wedding anniversaries. I had called him a few days ago and asked for him to pray for Chris.  Well, he was calling to say he was here!  He drove here last night, stayed at a hotel near the hospital and came to visit her, annoint her, and give her Holy Communion.  When she saw him she cried with joy.  His prayers, and those of everyone else are helping her, I am convinced. 

About visiting - we have had a number of people asking if and when they might see her.  She is scheduled to stay in the NSICU for another week +, then if all goes well she'll go to a "step-down" room, on the same floor but no longer intensive care.  We think that will be the best time, so we will let you know when that occurs.  Father John's healing visit was of course the exception.

We have all reflected on how much worse this could have been and consider ourselvers so lucky.  So on we go, one day an one miracle at a time.