Sunday, November 13, 2011

Steps toward speech (day 18)

Hi, friends.

Again, we have a day of incremental improvement :-) Nancy went off the respirator for most of the day, and was still breathing for herself when I left at 7pm. Since dialysis is ongoing, it's harder to tell if the "pee prayer" is working -- she just isn't making a lot of urine, since the machine is doing much of the work -- but she is making some, and so her kidneys are recovering. All vitals look good, and she hasn't needed much medication to keep her blood pressure up or manage her pain.

We tried fitting her with a Passy-Muir valve (PMV) today, a device that would let her talk with the tracheostomy. She still cannot breath out or speak past her trache tube, and it's not clear why. It might be that she still has swelling in her throat, or it might be that the tube is a bit large, or something else. It's not a problem, except for the fact that she's on an enforced 16-day silence-and-fasting journey, and she would really like to be able to communicate. Tomorrow, she asked that they try it again.

She had a half-dozen visitors today in addition to moi, including two couples that we are close to. Thank you all for coming by to see her. And we watched some college football, normally one of her favorite things. Not a bad day, in fact, a good day. Steady. Progress.

Love,
-tdc

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