Thursday, October 25, 2007

October 25: Great Day Today

Today started out shakey for Jeff but it turned out to be a great day, as far as I could tell.

It started off rocky because Jeff is really having a hard time sleeping. A huge factor is the pain but another big part of it was that until today, he was in a unit where he was literally the only conscious patient so it was a pretty noisy unit, with activity and machines that kept him awake at all hours. Jeff has always needed a lot of sleep, even when 100% healthy, so the fatigue is heightening a lot of his other senses, including the pain and restlessness. Though today he did get moved to another unit, (one for patients who require less care--hooray that he even qualified for that!), his injuries still make it hard for him to get comfortable because there's not a "side" that doesn't have some injury and he's therefore always laying or sitting on something. So would you pray that his rest is multiplied?

But the great news is that he is now off his telemetry machine. The telemetry machine monitored his blood pressure, temperature, heart rate, and oxygen saturation and they've determined that all of those things are stable enough as to not need monitoring. Now he's just connected to some IVs for his pain medication. That's such a change from when he was first admitted where he had tubes and/or wires in his eyes, nose, mouth, throat, arms, chest and toe! God has been so merciful and powerful in the healing he has brought Jeff's body in such a short amount of time.

And because he's now just connected to some IVs, he was able to be mobile. He was able to come out to the waiting room tonight and play games with us--something that we thought we wouldn't get to do for a long time. It was also encouraging for him to get to see us all at the same time-something we'd only previously done once when a nurse sneaked us in. Visiting rules permit only 2 people in a room at once and that was really upsetting him. So tonight we were all able to be together at once--restoring a little bit more normalcy. We also got to take him outside to the "healing garden" and the doctor said we could bring up his dog to see him, so I did and they (Batman and Jeff) loved that! I think it really boosted both of their spirits to know that the other one was really ok. You can really see Jeff's mushy side come out around Batman! :) (OK, I'll stop because one day he'll read this and I don't want him to kill me...but it's really cute!)

I guess the combination of those factors cheered him up so much that right before we left, he wanted to walk again. He walked a long way! I would guess that he walked more than 1/8th of a mile tonight! He also got himself in and out of the bathroom a couple times (TMI but worth mentioning because it was just a couple of days ago that the same attempt caused a fall!) and then in to bed! He made such awesome progress today! He's also had a great night nurse the last couple nights who has been as enthusiastic about his psychological healing as she is about his physical healing so she's allowed us to spend extra time with him.

I know Jeff is really worried about Monday's surgery and he talks about it with increasing frequency as the day approaches. The few surgeries he's ever had in his life have always been when he was already unconscious, so I'm sure part of the anxiety is that this is the first surgery he's ever known about ahead of time, but he's also afraid of the recovery pain, and as I mentioned before, of this experience that he's convinced he had and is worried he'll have again. Please pray that this weekend is especially restful for him and that peace will be granted to his spirit so that he can have no fear when he goes in for surgery on Monday?

Thank you also for your prayers for Todd and Becky after the accident. Both are a little sore but are largely unaffected. The biggest complication is that at the time of the accident, the officer asked Todd if he wanted a report and told Todd that if he (the officer) wrote a report, the other driver would have to be cited. Todd, in trying to be a nice guy, declined so that the woman would not have a citation on top of everything else. Now the woman is lying to her insurance agent, claiming the existence of an imaginary witness and that this witness and she herself will assert that Todd ran the red light. (The accident occurred when Todd proceeded straight through an intersection and a woman turned left in to him). Without the citation the case is much more he said, she said. Thankfully Todd was able to reach the responding officer today who said that while he cannot cite the other driver now, he will speak to the insurance company and confirm that the other woman was indeed at fault and that there were no witnesses. We're not really worried about the outcome--we're just weary of the extra headaches that have accompanied this. We'd appreciate your prayers that the officer's statement would assuage the adjustor's suspicions and that Todd could be free of having to deal with this any more. We'd also love your prayers for Todd and Becky's residual stiffness and soreness to go away.

Thanks everyone! Jeff asked tonight if he had any more messages since I brought them up a few days ago so I'll be bringing him a new CD tomorrow if anyone wants to leave new messages.

Have a great day!

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