Moving Day.....Again.

So......many of you will have gotten this past week's update, so some of these details will be familiar. But here goes anyway....

The best news is that her kidneys seem to be slowly but clearly recovering. We hope they'll recover fully (that's one of those things, given their inability to determine the original cause of her crisis, that we'll just have to wait and see on), and the prospects for that are good.

As for the rest, her liver numbers, miraculously, are almost back to "normal", and a recent echo cardiogram revealed no new causes for concern, as well as indicating that her basic heart functions were strengthening. Her breathing is somewhat labored, but as she hasn't had dialysis for the past 6 days (and won't now again, short of an emergency; all part of the effort to reboot her kidneys), the fluids have built up again in her body and that just makes it more difficult to breathe. Over the next few days they'll start her on medication to address the fluid issue. So basically all good.

Her spirit is very good, though she still struggles with context; her sleep cycle is shattered, so time has little or no meaning to her, and referencing the simple details is still tough (city, state, month, who's the President....although I always half expect her to laugh us out of the room in disbelief when we remind her that the answer to the last is W.). The early morning hours are the roughest, when she's still likely to suffer panic attacks about where she is and what's happening to her. And the relaying of specific information can be tough; she wants so badly to be back at home in Ithaca, that when you detail a rough plan over the next few weeks for that happening, she'll nod and then suggest that what we should do this afternoon is "...just go for a long walk with the dogs and then take a nap". The good news is that all of this disorientation will slowly fade away once she's stronger and more physically on the mend with her rehab. And that will be really terrific.....

And today is a big day for us once again, as we'll be moving at some point back to the "step down" unit, the PCU, where we started out over a week ago before the last mystery infection. She's nervous about the move, but the nurses all know us there already, I'll be with her throughout the day and night, and so it shouldn't be bad once we get there. And then tomorrow I'll be back in Ithaca for the day, picking up my (happily) pretty light teaching responsibilities at Cornell (one class, Mon. and Wed.).

And that's pretty much all for now. Hope this finds all of you happy and well, I'll post again soon, and as always, love from us both!!

-- Paul