Tuesday, August 30th - Day 72 Update

Hey all,

Tori's sleep cycles seem to be back in line as she slept from about 10:30pm Monday night until 8:30am this morning. She only required one Valium dose which was given to her just prior to her falling asleep. She slept right through all of her scheduled, every 2 hour body repositions as well.

The speech therapist arrived around 9:00am and Tori responded by wanting to take a nap already... She was really in sleeping mood today even with her great nights rest. The speech therapist even tried Dr. Pepper to get her to wake up but Tori was just not having anything to do with it this morning. The therapist did return in the afternoon and had much more luck with the cherry suckers and pixi stick sugar candy. She tried a lemon today as well. Tori does seem to react to the flavors when she eventually swallows.

We pulled the plug out of the trach button last night and put a mask pushing humidified air over it while Tori slept last night. This was done to give her a rest after being buttoned up all day. This morning when we tried to plug the trach button again Tori had alot of difficulty in breathing through her mouth. Her blood oxygen level quickly went from 98 to 82 and definitely was having problems with it so we kept it out most of the day. When Dr. Vickroy and the respiratory technician examined her in the afternoon they came to the conclusion that she just had too much secretions and Phlegm in her lungs to get a strong enough airflow. Tori has been coughing out quite a bit of it but now she will get scheduled suctionings every 4 hours and we will try again in the morning. She does NOT have a known Pneumonia or anything like that and her lung x-rays look pretty good. We will see what happens tomorrow.

I worked with the physical therapist today and we sat Tori in a standard chair. Then we leaned her over to stretch her back and watch her try and bring her head, neck and upper back to a vertical position. She tries so hard!! She can get her neck up and hold it for 5-10 seconds before she needs rest. The effort is definitely there and now we just need to keep repeating it to get her strength built up. We then placed her in her wheel chair where she sat next to me and viewed picture slideshows and dance videos with me for an hour and a half. She was also calm and attentive the entire time. They also had her raise her arms while she was in the chair and again she made great efforts.

We spent the rest of the afternoon moving from room 807 to room 904. It's amazing how much stuff we have in her room... So she is now in the center wing of HSH which is intended to be much more quiet than the other wings. There are only 6 rooms and all of the patients have similar injuries or needs. We are expected to hear much less of the room bells that were going almost constantly in the other location. Please take note of this all of you visitors out there.

Alright, Maria is watching Tori tonight and I think she just wrapped up dinner with Guy and Sophie. Maybe Tori can start a positive sleeping habit streak tonight by sleeping exactly how she did last night. We can all only hope!!

Thanks,
-Tim