Movin' on up

Lucy's first night out of surgery passed uneventfully. We weren't able to see her until 10, and while it was hard to see her hooked up to all kinds of tubes and IV's, she was perfectly calm and sedated. Chris and I actually went home to sleep knowing there was not much we could do for her at the hospital. My mom stayed behind to keep an eye on things. They surgeon's told us to expect Lucy to have some difficulty pacing her heart and maintaining her heart rate. They expected to extubate a couple of days after surgery. Lucy has surprised us all by maintaining a normal rhythm and posting textbook numbers. They removed her breathing tube yesterday afternoon, less than 24 hours after her surgery.

Things got a little more difficult after that as they were not able to sedate her after removing the breathing tube. She was in a bit of pain and kind of squirming around on the bed. Her voice was quite hoarse from the breathing tube and her little cry sounded so forlorn. I'm so thankful my mom was there to comfort her as I was just not able to take seeing her in pain. My body was physically hurting and I had to sit down to keep from throwing up. They were able to put her on morphine which helped a little, and by morning she was settling down. Our good friends Jess and Matt came by with dinner from Baja Fresh and sat with us for a while to take our minds off of things for a bit.

Lucy has continued to progress well today and the surgeon's gave the go-ahead to remove some of her restrictive IV lines and I was finally able to hold her. She was even able to nurse a little which helped to calm us both down. She slept in my lap for a while, drifting off to Pride and Prejudice playing in the background. With the removal of most of her tubes and IV's, we are going to be moved to the 9th floor clinic for the rest of our stay as Lucy is now "too healthy" to be in the ICU. We are so happy with her progress over the last two days, but we have grown very attached to the ICU staff of nurses and moving upstairs will be a little bittersweet. We promised to come visit before being discharged completely. That could happen as soon as this weekend. Lucy is a model patient!

We would love to start seeing some of you soon if you'd like to visit. I'll add an update with our new room phone # when we get it, but I think we'll be able to check our cell phone voicemail more often so feel free to leave us messages or e-mails as well.

Thank you for all of the e-mails and phone calls. We are thinking of all of you!