Adam Update #3

Even a little progress is still progress.

While Adam is still in a dire amount of pain, he is progressing well, according to the daytime nursing staff. Our nurse du jour was Panzie, yes that is pronounced as it is spelled P a n z I e, (word insists on capitalizing the alone I). She was very nice and pretty much left us alone all day. We followed along with the concept that if we needed anything we went and asked for it. I am also not a big fan of the revolving waitress, showing up at your table every 5 minutes, so the same applies here. He had his tri hourly dosage of morphine with some Tylenol 3’s in between for good measure. But his best progress was the eating. He ate the little bit of Jell-O in the morning, and a little cup of ice cream (think of the wooden spoon kind) for lunch, and for dinner he ate the noodles and some of the spinach out of a spinach lasagna. Spinach is one of the few vegetables that Adam enjoys cooked, but there was really way too much of it. He also requested a banana and to take off the chill of his fever some hot cocoa.

Now don’t get me wrong he didn’t eat a great quantity of any of these different foods. But for each 1 bite of food, my heart leapt. Remember that because of the anesthesia he hadn’t eaten since midnight Thursday night. The Jell-O was the first thing in over 24 hours. Anyone ever seen a 16-year-old boy eat before?
Usually it is non-stop throughout the day and in mass quantities. Terri? Anna? Jodi? Can I get an amen?!

Anyhoo, as I mentioned he does have a fever, at this time (10:20 pm pacific) it is 101.7, but it could be for a number of different reason, the most severe is infection, the least is just trying to keep him healthy. Either way, they (the new round of nurses this evening) are not worried.

Ah yes the night shift. The Lucy show has not returned this evening, but after meeting with the staff that has I kinda miss them. I know that the shift change happens around 6ish and happened to be out at the nurses station right after they divvied the rooms up to the soon to be arriving night shift. I noticed that the name next to Adams room number was Sharon. Okay, feeling gleeful that I didn’t see Fred, Lucy or Ethel’s actual names up there, I thought to myself we are going to go into tonight with a clean slate. I am at the nurses station waiting for Adam’s pain cocktail and I notice a young African American girl saunter in, she doesn’t speak to the other nurses, she just kinda meanders around, oh I don’t know, think of molasses as you turn a jar side to side. When lo and behold, one of the other nurses says, oh hi Sharon. Lucky me! So right then and there it is definitive I am again staying the night.

Kathy arrives shortly after and relieves Taj and I for a dinner break. Thank you Kathy. I did remember today to have lunch but didn’t realize just how hungry I was until I sat down and smelled food. A quick trip to the house afterwards for some overnight things and back we came. I guess while we were gone, Adam’s heart rate excellerated and Sharon came dashing in only to find him, sitting up using the computer. I think that the computer sitting near his wireless heart monitor may have set something haywire, but it didn’t do it earlier or later. Maybe his heart rate was high cuz he missed us. Yeah that’s probably it.
Another dose of Morphine at 10pm and he has been awake for almost the whole 3 in between hours. He tells me he is going to stay awake until he can get his 1am dose so he won’t fall asleep and wake up in pain. I nixed that idea right away, you only get it if I believe you to actually be in pain, not as a preventive measure. It is now turning 1am and he is sound asleep, hopefully we will have a pain free and uneventful night.

More tomorrow.