I headed down to Eugene Wednesday after work in order to make sure I’d have a chance to see my grandma. She’d had a pretty rough weekend and it was pretty touch and go. Thursday morning, my sisters and I were getting ready to head over to the hospital for a visit when my dad called. They had decided that they would be removing the feeding tube and ventilator currently down her throat. The risk (and what the doctors expected to happen) was that her throat would continue to swell after removing the tube, making it impossible for her to breathe. So around 10:30am Thursday morning, the tubes were removed and an unexpected thing happened. Nothing. She stabilized fairly quickly and remained that way for the rest of the afternoon. At this point, they decided to move her downstairs from the ICU into a regular hospital room. However the doctors still didn’t expect her to make it through the night. A little after 4pm my sisters and I headed home for a little break and nap. I headed back over to the hospital around 6.30pm. Around 8pm, despite the morphine, she woke up enough and began to talk for the first time all day. She told us she wants to go home and asked questions.
Today she has been improving throughout the day. She’s more talkative (and more insistent on going home). She doesn’t however want to go home just to die. She’s fighting with all she has. The doctors were all happily surprised she survived the night. Now they are busy figuring out what med’s they are going to restart to help give her the tools she needs to fight the things afflicting her. If she continues to improve over the next few days…she’ll likely be released from the hospital and at least get to move to a rehab facility where she’ll be able to continue her recovery.
