It was hard to go about my daily work and schedule when Ted was allowed no visitors for 19 days. Finding appropriate times to call the ICU for updates and not knowing what kind of filter the information was being given through. Lets face it everyone filters information in some form or another.
Then, it was hard to hear that he might not make it, so we would now be allowed visitation of one person per day. I know some of you would like to visit and give him love and a stiff kick to get him out of this, but I am not ready to give up any of my full days for someone else’s short visit.
Now, it is the managing of working from home in the morning, heading to the hospital, staying with Ted, trying to understand rounds, procedures, lingo, ICU protocols and as one person put it: That odd feeling of when the hospital becomes an intimate and familiar place. I then generally head out for some lunch after the morning rounds – Thank you to my friends who have come and shared some of those lunches with me – and then back to spend the afternoon and evening until traffic has let up and I head home for a bit of time with Devin before I pass out. So far, we start watching a show and then he just lets me snooze and then pauses the TV and then tells me we can finish the next night and I head to bed.

No, I am not being required to work. It is just to keep my head in the game and have a focus of my thoughts on other issues for portions of the day.

I have to say that I may have never lived more in the moment. I cannot think of the past and what decisions have put us into this situation and I absolutely cannot go into an unknown future.

Yesterday we ended the day with them turning him onto his belly and today, they put him onto his back and have decided that they will run a 16/8 schedule where they put him on his back for 8 hours and then put him on his belly for 16 hours and keep the rotation until they can keep turning down the ventilator settings and ultimately leave him on his back. Today was the first day that they spoke of a possibility of having things go in the right direction instead of the wrong one. It was nice to see that glimmer of hope in their eyes and not just in mine.

Currently, he has been on his back for 3.5 hours and is holding steady and does not look distressed. I continue to massage his feet and hands. I may just have all those callouses off and him soft as a surgeon pretty soon.

Love Sally