Slow Process

It's been a busy two days with Amanda. Although there's not too much change in her condition, she is awake much more often and seems to be getting very agitated. She keeps trying to talk and is asking a lot of questions. It's very difficult to figure out what she's saying and, because some of her meds can cause some amnesia, we're not sure if she remembers what she was told the previous times she's woken up.

She has cried several times, sometimes from frustration and sometimes, we think, just because of emotion. It's very difficult to stand by her bedside and watch her being so frustrated. She has actually managed several times to pull her torso up off the bed. She is trying to look behind her, we think so see the monitors. She's so smart and has so much medical training that I believe she thinks that, if she can just see what's hooked up to her, she can figure out what's wrong with her.

We are trying very hard to explain that she's been in an accident and is in the hospital but that she's doing very well and will be much better soon - NO specifics. We smile and try to think of happy things or funny stories to tell her to refocus her attention. My sister is absolutely great at this. But it's very hard on all of us and we're all stressed out.

They took her back into surgery today to look everything over and to change out the sponges that are connnected to her Wound Vac. The outcome was very good. She seems to be healing up well. Now, we just wait. There are many little things along the road to her recovery, but, mostly, we just need to give her body time to heal itself.

The new pelvic trauma specialist has arrived and has looked over Amanda's records. Since they will be repairing her pelvis with titanium, all her abdominal injuries must be completely healed. Apparently, metal will attract infection so, if there is any infection inside her body, it will bond to the metal which will then all have to be removed and the process begun all over again. It's well worth the wait to make sure she's healed before they move onto the next step.

My sister's amazing. She's handling this better than any of the rest of us could ever dream of handling a similar situation. But she needs rest, which is dependant not only on Amanda's condition but, also, no new patients coming into the Trauma Unit during the night. If new patients arrive or one of the other families living in the waiting room have a traumatic night, it's impossible to settle down and sleep in the waiting room.

Visits from friends seem to have died down. Although a few people trickle up during the day, it's nothing like it was at first. For hours at a time, it might only be two or all three of us sisters, with or without my mother thrown in and, possibly, with my brother-in-law. We've said everything to each other there is to say and without the distraction of other people to keep us occupied, it can get pretty tense.

I'm certainly not asking for visitors. But the effect of visitors is to keep us focused for a little while on something other than "the situation" and it seems to me, at least, to get a little tenser when it's just our family. The upside to fewer visitors is that my sister sometimes can rest during the day to make up for the lack of rest at night.

They tried to feed her through the feeding tube on Saturday and were not successful. Today, after her surgery, they explained that her intestines hadn't really "woken up" yet and it was nothing to worry about. They'll wait a little while, then try again.

Thank you, each of you, who are reading these posts and praying for our sweet girl. We know that prayer is what has gotten us through so far and are relying on prayer to get us to the end. Please ask everyone you know to pray.

One of my nieces has set up a CarePage under the MCG system for her cousin. If you go to MCG Care Pages, search for Meme Barnes and you can get updates from someone else's perspective. She tends to be less verbose and more clinical. I think it might be necessary for you to register before you can access her Care Page, but I think that's only because this is a new thing the hospital is doing and they want to keep some demographic info to assess the effectiveness of this tool. Again, thank you for your prayers and keep it up - PLEASE!

She'll go back into surgery again Thursday or Friday. Other than that, we just sit quietly and wait inbetween visits to her bedside and trying to keep her from getting upset.

Not an entirely bad place to be, especially not after the last week. She's improving, even if it is baby steps. We'll take any steps forward we can get.