2nd Sunday in picu

I sent Udell home last night to hopefully get a full night's sleep and be able to go fulfill his commitment to the Lord as a BYU Bishop. He really didn't want to go and leave Shannon and me but I can be pretty persistent. Hopefully he slept well. But sadly, he wasn't able to proof my posting last night nor this one this morning. I hope I am accurate enough with the details.

I have Shannon's status to report on but then I am going to add a cool experience that has happened to me again. I will post Shanny's first so if you aren't interested in the rest, that is fine.
So I came in this morning and couldn't really see any change. But when I returned (they kick us out for an hour for shift change or maybe it's for us, to get us out of the room occasionally--in any case it is good for us.) When I returned the neurosurgeons were finishing up evaluating her for the morning rounds. The first thing I overheard was "she has really good spontaneous movement". This particular doctor hasn't always been the most positive so it was great to hear that comment. He felt like she was looking very good from his standpoint.

When the other doctors came around, they all felt good about her current status. Her ICPs are clear down to 1-2, which is awesome! Her CPP is 74-84 which is really good. She does have a temperature and so they have cultured everything you can imagine and there is nothing new that they weren't away of. Her pneumonia is clearing up very well and she isn't coughing as much although that would do her good. So overall it was a good report with the ending being....wait. But we are good with that. The next step really is to get her back to the point to take the ventilator off and we really want her strong when they do that again. She's a tiny bit responsive. I'm sad cause she will lift her arms up and they can only go about 8 inches because they are restrainted. When she feels the restraint reach its maximum, her arm just flops back down--either out of frustration or exhaustion. In any case, the plan for today is for quiet rest which is a great thing for Sunday. We may not have anything else to post today, but that's good news. :)

We know that the blog is going to be our history of all of this. So we often put in personal feelings...especially me being the only female of the people who post. I hope that they aren't too personal.

This morning when I first came in, it was one of those times that I felt a little discouraged. This whole experience for me and with so many of you, has become a very spiritual experience. So I kept reminding myself of that. But when I returned to the little room I had slept in last night, I just poured out my heart to our Father in Heaven, asking again for support and strength. Then I returned to Shan's room-I had been gone about an hour. And that is when I heard the neurosurgeion making his positive remark and then I met with the team doing rounds and they too were just so positive about Shannon's current condition. And then to add to that, Shannon slightly raised her eyebrow once to greet me. Everything turned around again and I felt that peace again that can come only from the Lord. Another sweet tender mercy. There have been so many tender mercies. Many of you have commented on our strength of our faith. We don't feel that strong but we do know that it is the Lord who is carrying us through. How grateful we are for Him and all He has done for each of us. Pheobe