ICU recovery

We went in to see Mom Wednesday early evening. She was sedated and not awake. The nurse said she'd be that way until morning. So given that there was also no place in the ICU room for another person to stay overnight with her, we went to the hotel for some much needed rest. We walked around the grounds, and then sat outside the restaurant again for dinner.

Before turned in at Midnight, Julie called the hospital to check on Mom's status. The nurse said she let her come out of sleep briefly to check on her mental state - do you know who you are, where you are, what's going on. The nurse said she was cogent enough to respond by hand squeezes.

Julie planned to be at the hospital by 7am Thursday. I pretty much knew that wasn't going to happen. Too much sleep needed to wake that early, and too much to do getting dressed and checked out. We finally made it to the hospital at 10am. Mom was no longer intubated (breathing tube was removed), and she was fully awake and communicative, albeit in small amounts.

She was in significant pain, and getting jolts of morphine to help. It only dulls the pain down, but it's good enough for a little while. She was also talking fatalistic, saying "she shouldn't have done it", it was too painful, too much trouble. Julie tried to help by pointing out why she'd done this, what the decision process was, how she was getting better. It wasn't very helpful. Julie doesn't understand, or more than this, when it comes to Mom, she can not back away from pushing for optimistic attitude.

At this moment, Mom needs to be able to express the pain, be acknowledged and validated, and that's all. No offering of solutions or positive argument/reasoning.

Also, when Mom needed some help with something, like shifting her posture, or adjusting the bed or pillows, she speaks slowly with breaths inbetween her words. Julie is so focused on immediately helping that she tries to finish her sentances for her, and then do the adjustment she finishes - without waiting to hear confirmation or correction. It was frustrating to Mom because Julie was often wrong. It was frustrating to me to sit there and witness cause I knew Julie was wrong and overly eager. I also knew that my jumping in and trying to resolve the aggitation would result in even more aggitation.

So eventually, Julie went out for a smoke break while I remained behind. We decided not to leave her alone, and she asked us to be sure to have one of us there as she found it difficult to get the staff's attention sometimes.

While Julie was out, I listened to Mom and gave her that simple, pure validation of discomfort and pain. It really helped. I was also able to 'relate' real well to her discomfort by reminding her that I had gone through very similar pain when I had my operation in '82. She appreciated that.

Julie arranged for another hotel a little further away, but half the price of the nearby one. Later, she went down for dinner, and after her, I went. While there, I spoke to Lenny and to Pam. My conversation wtih Pam was nice and long. It was well past 9pm by the time I finished. I had sat outside for dinner, and it turns out they lock the doors at 9pm so I and 3 other people were locked out. We managed to waive down someone inside to unlock it for us and I headed up to ICU again.

I took the night shift at ICU, and Julie went to the hotel for the night. I was awake until around 3am, and Mom was up and down until then as welll. Then she fell asleep until 6:30am or so.