Still in the hospital

Posted by Eric for Sheri

Sheri's hemoglobin was down to 8.1 as of this morning, but all the tubes are out. There was still a lot of drainage coming out of the J-P drain in Sheri’s side, but the nurses are confident about the removal. Found out later that if you wait too long to remove the drains they could actually heal into the wound. With the catheter out, Sheri now has to get up and walk to pee and that should help kick the healing in gear. Getting up to pee sounds easy but other than the pain, her bladder refuses to work with her. Right now it is 10 PM Sunday night and we are quickly coming up on the second straight-cath to drain the bladder since this morning. One exciting project of the day was to change the ostomy pouch for the first time. Neither of us could say that we were very confident in our skills, and we even had to pull up the instruction after we were done to make sure it was done correctly. Apparently we had been listening after all, since it appears that we did everything right.

Good news is around every corner: it is getting up gets easier every time; the first change of the ostomy pouch happened today; Sheri was able to eat solid foods today including a couple of bites of cracker and some mashed potatoes; she was able to walk to the room's door and back and everything is falling into place; however slowly and painfully.

Sheri may not be able to go home Monday, but Tuesday (?) or Wednesday (?).

We will see.