Knowing looks...

Last night I got back from the Mammoth game at about 11pm. I was told that everything went fine through her evening and that they started her on a new steroid medication. This should reduce the swelling in the mass in her lungs. They also gave her a prescription medication to rinse her mouth out so that she doesn't get an infection. I'm relieved about that because although we are constantly rinsing and sponging out her mouth, she isn't taking any fluids orally to combat the dryness.

Through the night she did well and seemed much more comfortable than the two previous. No fever, no high blood pressure readings and her oxygen levels were good.

At 4am when she could have taken percocet, the nurse and I discussed her state and how she only appeard mildy uncomfortable, so decided to only give her Tylenol and see how that worked. She slept fine until about 7:15am when she needed to use the restroom. After she was back in bed, she didn't seem to be doing as well and started to get fidgety. When I couldn't make her comfortable, I called the nurse. It was about 8:30am. It took so long for them to respond, I called again.

The new shift nurse came in and started asking mom to rate her headache pain from 1-10 and of course, all mom could do was say "ya ya ya" with pleading eyes. I told the nurse that mom hadn't been able to communicate that clearly since she'd been here. When the nurse asked mom to show her where it hurt, mom used her right hand to motion to her belly. She wanted to give her Tylenol and see how she did, but I told her that my observation was that it was more than a headache and I would rather her give her the painkillers now. She said okay, but holy cow she was slow. I was getting pretty upset and I think my mom was too. The nurse, as I said, was working slowly and she walked out twice and both times as soon as mom saw her walk out, she looked at me knowingly as if to say WTF?! It would have been funny if she wasn't in so much pain, but she clearly did not approve of the time it was taking for it to be handled!

I'm not knocking the nurse yet. She seemed thorough and I had actually been telling dad this morning that I didn't want them to continually give her percocet if she didn't need it and it was just going to knock her out the whole time.

So mom is sleeping now.

Oh yeah, for those of you worried about my dad... He is getting some sleep at night. The couch in here isn't so bad, but Tina likes to keep the room COLD! so we bundle up quite a bit. He's been pretty good about letting us take him out of the hospital close to once a day too. This morning, he actually agreed to let my godson Adrian pick him up and take him to my godson Mateo's wrestling match.

Well, again. Not much to say. Hopeful for another good day.

xox,
Tommy