Today has been a day of set backs so far. Yesterday, just before I went to the hotel for night (Ramona's mom stayed with her) I went for a lap around the floor with Ramona. After walking, she seemed to have more trouble breathing than we thought she should. It probably took half an hour until things started feeling okay again. When I left the hospital I thought things were going fairly well and it turns out that Ramona actually did have a pretty good night. At 10:45 this morning, when I arrived at the hospital Ramona was again in her bed trying to catch her breath. (It's pretty frightening to feel like you can't breath). The nurses didn't quite know what was going on but all her vital signs were still good, so we got things settled down enough that Ramona could be taken down for her x-ray. By this time Ramona was feeling extremely cold. We made it down to X-ray and about half a minute later Ramona threw up...we got her some water and more warm blankets, but after she threw up she still went for the x-ray. She came back upstairs and it was probably 12:30 before she was warmed up and relaxed enough to sleep. She slept fairly well, off and on between 12:30 and 3:00. During this time they told us that the x-ray showed that Ramona's left lung hadn't fully inflated yet. This was causing some of the problems. Because of this, they once again have the suction on in her chest tube. Also, one thing we noticed last night is that there are air pockets in her shoulder and neck. There is a big technical name for this. Apparently, it won't cause any problems except discomfort for Ramona (Please pray about Ramona's pain). At about three o'clock now, Ramona got up to walk again (the doctor recommended more walking to help her lungs inflate). After this walk she seemed to being doing a little better than previously. Ramona's mom was back in the hospital so after her walk now I decided to get out of the hospital for a bit. This ironically isn't usually much fun for me. I don't really like hanging out with myself and for some reason i don't feel like putting in the effort it takes to meet and connect with new people right now...so today I called my good buddy Curt (sorry man, I didn't hang up on you, my phone battery died)...i was in the middle of sitting under a tree and telling him what you just read when, to add emphasis to how I was feeling I felt a dollop of warm, green and white, gooey goodness land on my right shoulder. I looked up and realized there were about 25 pigeons sitting above my head. Lesson learned.
Anyway, I' m not sure if any of the above information affects when we are coming home. As usual, we just wait and see.
Thanks again to the prayer warriors,
Earl