Way better Thursday than LAST Thursday

Fair warning, this is going to be a little more technical blog post.

It's been one full week since "Terrible Thursday".... Mom has come so far since that horrendous day.  Her platelets are starting to come up, they're up to 46 now (at one point, she had been down to 12, which is really bad). She needs to be at 50 before they can do the thoracentesis. Her white blood cells have actually DECREASED from yesterday, down to 47, which is amazing news. I don't know if it's from getting rid of the blisters, but we'll take it.

She's did really well on her breathing trial today, not as much gagging and attempted vomiting. They let her breathe on her own for around 2.5 hours before putting her back on the vent. She's down to 40% oxygen and they decreased the rate on her vent, so she can do a little more breathing on her own, even when the vent is on.

Her pain meds are lowered down and she's tolerating everything really well, which is excellent news. She even tried to talk to me today, but it's very difficult to read lips around a tube. I determined that yes she was cold (got a blanket to cover her up), no she wasn't in pain, no she didn't want me to read to her, and no she didn't need something. I apologized to her that I'm really not good at this and I wished Christy was here to help me out. She emphatically nodded her head. She wanted to know where Christy was. <sigh> The only time my sister left this darn hospital and that's when mom wants her. I called and put her on speakerphone so mom could hear her voice. That was today's tear-jerker moment.

Plastic surgery was down again and cut off more of her blisters, so she has even more bandages now. Whatever the medication is in them, it smells like anatomy class from high school... Her  PICC line needed changed out, so the IV team was in here doing that. Her skin is tearing very easily and she has a lot of blistering everywhere, so it's something of a challenge for them.

For a visual update, here's a shot of the remaining pumps and IV bags left (way fewer than she had a week ago):

Cross your fingers that darn tube can come out sometime soon...