Hello, dear friends and family. I want to start by once again thanking you all so much for your continued generous care, prayers, and support! We are just overwhelmed with gratitude for your kind comments, private check-ins, and material support over on GoFundMe. (A particular shoutout to the staff at Unity who have recently joined us here on CaringBridge and on the GoFundMe page - it’s so touching to see so much love from a place where Mom spent so much of her life.)
We arrived at the LTAC hospital right as visiting hours began at 8am this morning. Mom seems peaceful - yesterday and today she’s seemed better rested and a little less confused, so I think that day of rest on Thursday really did help. I met her lead doctor here in the afternoon and feel good about him managing her care - he spoke directly to her, let us know the pneumonia and bacteremia don’t stand a chance against the antibiotics she’s on and that her lungs sound good, and confirmed he’s directly in communication with her neurosurgeon to coordinate her continued needs there. Yesterday evening they got her up in the chair for a while, and she did a great job tolerating that. The more intensive therapy doesn’t happen on the weekends, but today the hope is to get her into the chair a couple of times, and we will do some light range of motion work with her limbs while she’s in bed.
I fly home to Minnesota this evening. I am so glad that I was able to be here for the past 10 days to provide some in-person support for Mom and Dad. I am both ready to be home and having a lot of complicated feelings about leaving. It’s so hard to step away, but I also feel pretty confident that my particular support skills will now be more useful in Minnesota, where I can help organize and problem solve and coordinate things on that end. I am encouraged by the progress I’ve seen Mom make in the last 10 days, and I’m optimistic that she will continue to make baby steps forward.
Please join us in praying that they are able to do another CT scan on Mom’s head early next week as planned, and that the results are positive so she can get the bone flap replaced soon. That would put her one big step closer to being able to return to her support network in Minnesota.
Thank you all again. We know she feels all the love and prayers being sent her way.
