Sept 3 (Monday) - 11pm

The evening report is short tonight, but very positive; with good news from Jeannette's room and no new concerns.  Today she was visited by Rich, which sort of "made the day", and the big news is that all of her "numbers" continued to be good.    Although today was a holiday, nevertheless the medical team was busy with her today, with a morning program of physical therapy, where they had her sitting up on her own, as well as doing range of motion arm exercises that tired her out.  

Another major milestone was reached today when they removed her IV feeding line, and from my perspective I can count progress with every tube that is "removed."   The math for that is simple to me---lots of tubes...not so good.  Fewer tubes = better and "no tubes" is when you are moving toward "heading home time."   So, the removal of the IV feeding tube is great news, and a real step in the right direction.

One funny thing to note today, was that Sam was feeding Jeannette, oh so carefully and one spoon at a time, and meal time has become a very carefully orchestrated event that they have honed together.   But today Rich was there, and he was excited and wanting to help, trying to get her to eat more and faster.    Sam described it as more of a "...Have a sip of this" and "....try another bite Honeybears"......etc.    Finally, Jeannette looked over to Sam, and grinned, and then she whispered: "I'm gonna kill him!"   Everyone laughed; it was the normalcy of the moment I guess and it added a little levity in the ICU which can be a little hard to come by.

Another piece of good news is that this evening Jeannette was able to eat two soft boiled eggs, and that's another milestone that marks good progress.  You have to eat to get well of course, and eggs are real food and they went down and stayed down, so that's some great news.     I suppose though that from Jeannette's perspective, the highlight of her day wasn't the eggs.  It was probably Rich being there, but another big highlight was the afternoon shampoo treat that the nurses and Sam concocted.    Yeah...that's right; Sam and the nurses really did wash her hair!    I know...how is that possible?   I don't know exactly, but hey, they did it; they washed her hair in bed!  Now, I wasn't there to see that mind you, but from what I understand it consisted of some well placed garbage bags, a lot of warm water, real shampoo and some careful work by a lot of people.    The feedback was that Jeannette REALLY enjoyed it, and I do imagine that it sure made her feel good!   And afterwards, from what I heard, she was finally able to close her eyes and get some real sleep.-John