The Parade

At times, it seems like a parade is making its way through Linda's room each day, with a nurse, doctor or technician coming in within each hour throughout each day and night to check this, change that, poke this, prod that, drop off this, pick up that, and then there is the stream of visitors. Whenever visitors are in, there are always interruptions for the various activities. Linda loves to see her friends and family, it really lifts her spirit, but please understand that its important to limit visits to very brief periods so that she may get adequate rest and that the staff can do their jobs efficiently. She loves to converse, but it does tire her to retell the same story.

Linda had a heavy workload on Thursday and felt very tired Friday morning. She was not smiling as easily at first, plus the increased exercise caused more swelling in her legs and feet, so now she has tight stockings up to her knees plus full-time booties puffed up with air. The plastic surgeon team had to remove all of the dressing from her skin graft and it caused her rather severe pain as they pulled out staples from her wound, so she requested Morphine to help her deal with that. It really did help, and since they must repeat this same procedure on Monday, she will have the Morphine before they start! Most of the skin graft looks good except for the elbow which has been moving too much, so they have applied a cast to keep the elbow from bending and strict orders not to move that arm or support her weight on it when moving. Her team came in and listened to our many concerns and checked the stitches in her neck and said they look good, but the neck brace becomes rather uncomfortable to wear. She was feeling much better in the late afternoon and was very sleepy.

Please keep praying; it is working! It may soon be possible for her to transfer from UAMS to another facility that offers better rehabilitation services to prepare her for eventually coming home.