When Clothing Is Optional

Overheard: 

"Ok, let's put on your outfit."

"No, I want to wear somefing else." 

"It's either the outfit you were wearing or nothing." 

"Noffing." 

He's hoping you won't notice his skivvies are inside out. He takes that whole tag-goes-in-the-back thing very literally.  

After the Hospital

By way of update, our patient's room was decorated with a red star discharge balloon on day 21 of her hospital stay. We left the hospital back on July 16th, 23 long days after being admitted.

Our patient came to our house (where she remains at present) and promptly fell asleep. She would continue to sleep, at least 20 hours out of 24, if we allowed it. Instead, we have been walking daily at a brisk pace, completing various exercises and homework, and began a rigorous outpatient rehabilitation program this week. After a couple of weeks of work, you may safely assume I am not her favorite child. We have a loooooong road ahead of us, and motivation is our biggest obstacle.  We have asked her church to pray for initiative, incentive and motivation.

On the very best of days, the patient looks like this:

The patient walked a total of 2.2 miles that day.

We are all doing our best to cajole and cheer, including William George who often cheers for his Grammie when she is walking at home:

It's a full time job, but we are giving it 100%. In the meantime, I have a couple of older updates, and then we will be in full swing for school next week. Updates to come soon, and the Lindsey Twins site should resume a light posting schedule soon.

Friday's Quote

In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.

-Albert Einstein

Friday's Quote

A day without laughter is a day wasted.

-Charlie Chaplin

Friday's Quote

Above all, be the heroine in your own life, not the victim.

-Nora Ephron

Day 18

A message from my sweet girls:



Greetings From Home from Cathi Lindsey on Vimeo.

July 4th

Although our July 4th was a little non-traditional this year, we had reason to celebrate. Mom spent her first full day of inpatient rehabilitation on the 4th and had assessments by three therapists.

The rehab floor boasts a fabulous view of our city's fireworks show. Unfortunately, she faded and went to sleep about 30 minutes before the show started. We are planning to catch the show next year and celebrate a year of recovery.

Photo by Auntie Lisa

Meanwhile, the trio were thrilled because their cousins were in town for a visit. Skip wrangled everyone into the car for a fun visit. Skip and his parents have been phenomenal about keeping the trio's schedules and routines as normal as possible. I miss everyone, of course, but am always happy to see them having fun.  

Day 16

Mom's therapy session today included a walk to the gift shop. Although we have been calling her a therapy superstar, she demonstrated TOTAL DOMINANCE during retail therapy. 

Day 14

I finally found something attractive about hospital stays... Fresh linen daily.

Friday's Quote

...we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty.

-John F. Kennedy

Day 10

William George sent his favorite emissary to Grammie

I am sitting here in mom's hospital room waiting for occupational therapy or physical therapy to show up. We were awakened every two hours last night and got up for physicians' rounds at 6:00am. The wake up calls here are abrupt to say the least.




Sometime today our patient will be transferred to the rehab floor for inpatient rehab. Her vitals and stats still look excellent, and her heart is in impeccable shape. The aneurysm repair was successful. The procedure by which the repair could occur is called hypothermic circulatory arrest (HCA). You can read about it here and here. We knew that mom would be placed on the bypass machine, but circulatory arrest was not explained to us. Her surgery had been compared to routine bypass surgery (or maybe that's what we heard). We only learned  of this essential surgical step a couple of nights ago from a 25-year veteran nurse who explained, step-by-step, what transpired during her surgery. The complications she has experienced are due to lack of blood flow to the brain during surgery. In short, she has experienced brain trauma, complicated by anesthesia. This explains why all of the other surgical patients have come and gone. They did not have that trauma, and they recovered in textbook fashion. As the nurse explained, mom had the worst cardiac surgery they perform.  Post-operatively, a couple of other nurses alluded to that, but the nurse the other night walked us through it. The worst of the worst.




Having that information prior to surgery would have been helpful.  Granted, it would have been terrifying to have that knowledge during surgery, but having that information beforehand would have enabled some post-op planning. We could have discuss post-op therapy and had plans in place.  We have all scrambled to make sure we are available so that we can be laser-trained on restoring 100% of baseline functionality. We are determined to put together a stellar team of occupational, speech and physical therapists to make sure that happens.  We have seen daily progress, and we cannot wait to see the results of therapy.   


We are so thankful for the progress so far and are so proud of our cardiac superstar.