What A Differance A Day Makes...

First of all, thanks for all of the emails, posts, and phone calls. I just can't begin to tell you how much they encourage all of us. I read some of the emails and posts to Mom today and she was so moved. She and Dad also want to extend their appreciation for the donations made on this site towards their travel expenses.

Just to let you know, I did update earlier today from the hospital using my phone, but apparently it is somewhere in hyperspace because it isn't showing up here! 

After surgery, Mom went straight to ICU and we were able to see her shortly after. We were prepared, to be honest,  for scenes from 'Gray's Anatomy' but were so pleasantly surprised. Yes, she was very sedated and has tubes and IV's everywhere and was on a ventilator. But after a little while she was waking enough for hand signals and even gave us a thumbs up. This was about 12 hours post op. She is one amazing little lady. Finally late last night they removed her breathing tube and the technicians got two thumbs up from her. She has been doing well except for keeping her heart rate & blood pressure regular. She had a bit of fibrillation issues when they took her off of the bypass (heart lung) machine in surgery and her heart was just not keeping a good rhythm. When she had surgery, they implanted wires to her heart that could be connected to an external pacemaker. It is on demand so it will just kick in when needed. Around 11:00 last night they decided that it was needed regularly and so they "paced" her so that her heart could 're-learn' its rhythm. They tried several times to wean her off but as they would her heart rate would drop as well as her bp. But, other than that she was doing well. We decided that she was in great hands, and it would do no one any good to sleep in ICU waiting room chairs and decided to go back to the hotel for a rest. It was a wise decision as we were all more tired, probably more emotionally, that we realized and just fell into our beds. I confess, I 'may' have called the ICU a couple of times during the night just to check in.. and all was well. Have I mentioned that they gave us the direct line to Mom's nurse to call at anytime? They also don't have special visiting hours. They prefer only two visitors at a time but encourage family to be near as much as possible anytime we want. We left with her very groggy but breathing on her own.