Day 34 // Groundwork

Hi guys,

It's really late, so I've got to make this short and will add more specifics tomorrow!

See below for the basics- it was quite another action-packed day...

WOUND VAC- her hip wound was cleaned in the OR, and all went well! They said her hip wound looks great.

SPEAKING- JoAnne does not have the issues we experienced yesterday with getting her words out. She was chatty as ever today, and although she's still working on modulating her voice, slowing down the pace, etc., she was able to say what she wanted to, for the most part.

SEDATION- She's still coming off the heavy sedation she's been on, and it (along with her heavy duty pain meds) are still making her a bit loopy, and at times anxious. She agreed she was a bit confused at times today, and asked the same questions a few times about certain things. Other things she remembered, though, which is great! And she joked around a bit here and there, too. Little by little she'll begin to feel more like herself... today was already a huge leap forward from yesterday.

OT- Jessica is JoAnne's occupational therapist. She came by today to work on JoAnne's range of motion and muscle strength. Her arms and legs are very weak, and she'll require quite a bit of practice to get back to her previous strength/dexterity. She's lost quite a bit of muscle over the last month, and she's got to retrain her brain to tell her hands to do things! Bit by bit, again... today was a great start- she did arm and leg lifts, hand stretching, lifting, finger moving, etc.

FOOD- she brought up the pastrami again today, and kept asking for a diet coke. We told her she unfortunately can't eat anything until she can prove to the speech therapist that she can swallow consistently (her swallow reflex is out of practice). She persuaded her day nurse to get her some ice chips, and she really enjoyed chewing on little bits during the day. At one point she even whispered earnestly to Kelty "I want to control the ice". Typical! We told her that hopefully by the end of the week she'll be able to eat, and she insisted it'd be before then. We like her confidence.

AWARENESS- JoAnne asked more questions today about what happened, and this morning I gave her pretty much the entire story (save for the hip disarticulation, but details that she had very serious abdominal and hip surgery, the docs had to remove muscle and tissue to save her life, it was from a bad bacteria, etc). At first all she said was "boy, oh boy", but then began to ask other questions here and there about her mobility, etc. She's slowly putting the puzzle pieces together, and we want to make sure that she hears what she's ready to hear when she's ready to hear it, if that makes sense. We don't want to hide any information from her, but we also don't want to over-do it with the details on her surgeries and her upcoming recovery that could prove too overwhelming too early on. We'll also need to repeat ourselves, so we're giving her information repeatedly, then adding a bit more every time. We're hoping she'll be able to start piecing together the situation, asking questions when she wants to know more, and holding onto it as time goes on...

More tomorrow! Much, much love to you all. Thanks to those of you who have already sent your Top 5 things to JoAnne- we'll be reading them in the coming days, so send them when you can!

Much love,

Team JoJo