Friday, October 7th - Day 110 Update

Hello again,

Well, Tori decided to stay up during all of Thursday night... We thought she was well on her way to sleeping when we left the hospital but she never actually did. The night nurse tried loretab and valium at various points with no luck. At 4:30am she called our house after Tori bit her lip and asked if she could use dilaudid on Tori and we gave her immediate approval and thanked her for calling. The dilaudid caused Tori to sleep until 8:00am or so and at that point she was given a valium because she was in an agitated mood.

Tori then slept for basically the entire day!! She was supposedly first on list to get her GJ-Tube replaced so we waited, and waited, and waited some more... Tori slept during the whole time and at 5:39pm I received a call and she was on her way down to radiology for the placement procedure... We were at home at the time since they close the ICU to visitors from 5:00pm until 7:00pm. The delays in scheduling surely frustrate us because Tori went another 21 hours without and food again. When we arrived at the hospital at 7:10pm Tori still wasn't back into her room in the ICU and the nurse told us we were needed down in radiology right way so we bolted downstairs immediately. When we went into the radiology room Tori was still on the table and the procedure hadn't even been started yet because there was confusion on the GJ-Tube to be used and as to why we were replacing it... After we demonstrated and explained to the radiologist the problem of NOT having ANY slack in the outer GJ-Tube he finally understood the issue. So rather than replacing the GJ-Tube immediately we let him try and work out some additional slack from the inside of Tori's stomach to the outside and it WORKED!! So Tori now has an 8"-10" tube coming out from her stomach with the valves at the end rather than a 1" 'valve tree' protruding from her stomach. Tori was not sedated at all for this since she was still sleeping but she woke up at the end of the procedure and was awake in her room afterward for a few hours.

We still haven't plugged Tori's trach today as we were still watching her vitals and clearing the phlegm build up in her lungs. She slept all day and her respiratory rate was in the 15-20 breathes per minute range and her blood oxygen levels were in the 86%-91% range. Again, we need some more improvement in those numbers and another x-ray was taken on her lungs and everything appears very clear. The MRSA bacteria still hasn't grown out from the sample taken Wednesday but Tori's phlegm secretions are pretty thick and green in color. The lead doctor informed us she should remain in the ICU for several more days due to this...

My first cousins from Minnesota arrived today and were introduced to Tori once again. Janine, Julie and Jennifer saw her during the day when she was sleeping and were pleasantly surprised on how GOOD Tori actually looks. When they observed Tori awake later in the afternoon some reality really hit and touched each one of them. We thank all of you for being here and supporting Tori and us!!

Tori was sleeping very nicely when we left at 10:30pm tonight and the same nurse as last night is watching her and will greatly try to keep her sleeping for us. It would be nice to have her awake all day tomorrow!!

Thanks again everyone and goodnight,

-Tim, Maria, Tori, Whitney and Brendan