2 November - (as of Friday night)

Ah...where to begin?   I've been out of town, and when I arrived in Anchorage the first stop was St Elias to visit with Jeannette.  Rich was there, keeping everything under control, and my first question was to him, i.e. "Have you reached the associate level of nursing yet?"   Erika was there too, and we were all in great spirits.    Boy Jeannette looked grand!   As I once said, as a layman without that medical specialist perspective, I measure progress by the things I can see that have been removed.   I used to count the tubes and IV lines as they slowly changed from a mess of spaghetti to none at all.   Well, on Friday night I could see Jeannette's right leg!   I mean, I got to see her RIGHT LEG!   Now, a leg might not seem like a BIG DEAL, but when its been bandaged up and in a removable cast for three months, seeing real skin was like WOW.   And it looked good.  No, it looked GREAT!  And then came the news that went with the view---she is "working it" in physical therapy!   Now, this has just started, but already its at 52% of range of motion, and that seemed to me an almost impossibility given that the PT nurse prediction was "we will probably only get a few degrees initially".    Jeannette is just so determined to get the heck out of there that she wants to do as much as they will let her, and then a little more.   She's wowed the nurses, wowed the doctors, and of course, wowed all of us too!

There is an clearly excitement in the room that you can feel, with the big surgery coming up fast (Monday) and with it all the prospects of getting things fixed.   The surgery to repair her left leg is oh-so-important; right now the knee is crushed, the pieces of bone immovable and the leg still broken, wrapped in a cast and immovable.   But in less than the time it takes me to fly from Anchorage to Seattle Dr Kavanaugh will have given her a bionic replacement, with the prospect of starting to "walk" on it the very next day!   That will truly be a "modern miracle."  There is a nervousness too of course; the "what if's" that add a stress to the pending operation, but a confidence too, that radiates from the surgeon right through the staff.   If all goes well on Monday, the same surgeon will do a less invasive operation on the right leg, to repair a "gap" in the bone that has not healed as they have wanted.  It too is something that must be done, but then to me it seems after that we can start to think about home.   

As we all talked on Friday night I noticed too the quiet of the room, no beeps, no monitors, no tubes; just a bunch of friends surrounding Jeannette with love and hope and excitement.   Still there was the usually staff interruptions, the day-to-day events that make up a hospital; some talk about numbers and blood "counts" and perhaps another transfusion before the surgery to make sure things are where they need to be.  Sometimes when the nurses enter the room I leave, but on Friday night with nurse Rich on station those interruptions were short.    Dan came by too, and oh there were stories to share and laughter for everyone.    It's still a hospital room of course, and Jeannette takes it all in stride, partly I suppose because there is no alternative, but partly too because she knows, as we all do, that the incredible care has been the instrument to her survival.   

But to see her smiling, moving her arms and hands and seeing her unbandaged right leg looking like a leg should look is really an amazing thing to see.   Oh how far we have all come!   Keep the prayers going--I can hardly wait to see her out of that bed! -- John