Day 2 - Noon

Well, I know it's been a while since my last update. I got a little less bored when I could actually go in and talk to Kristin. Anyway...I'll try to give a quick timeline of what's happened so far.

About 2:30 I finally got to go in and see her. It kind of felt like one of those "Wife Swap" moments where the husband and wife run through the parking lot and jump into each others arms, spinning around. Of course, it was without the running and spinning around.....well, also without the whole wife swapping thing. It was great to see her, though. Her left eye was a little swollen from lying on her side through the surgery, but she looked great. She had only been "awake" for probably 30-40 minutes. I put quotes around "awake" because you almost can't even call it that. She could open her eyes for about 2 seconds at a time then they would fall back shut. She was having some pretty big complaints about not being able to breathe. I think it was just scary for her because she knew her lung was collapsed during surgery and she couldn't get a deep breath when she woke up, so she thought her lung was still collapsed (or that's what I think). But once she got past the "scary" part of that, I think she calmed down a little and got to rest. They also hooked her up to a PCA pump which has been her friend for the last 24 hours...the power to control pain, all at her fingertips. :)

After that, we have only been able to see her in 2 hour increments (8-10, 12-2, 4-6, 8-10). She's not a fan of this ICU rule, and neither are we. But, we know it helps her feel better and gives her that much needed rest that she would be fighting if we were in there the whole time.

They gave her some medicine that knocked her out, and she fell asleep at 8 pm last night and slept solid until I left at 10 pm. I left feeling pretty good that she would sleep well, but this morning, the nurse said she had a pretty rough night. She had a hard time with the pain.

The doctor told us this morning that they would like to keep her in the ICU for another day. They wanted to get a better grasp on the pain management for her before they let her go to a room. Mainly, though, they said that they will move her once she starts getting an acceptable level of fluid draining through her chest tube. Right now, it's about 160 cc's per 8 hours. They will take the tube out when it's only 50 cc's per 8 hours.

During the 12-2 visit, Dr. Sachs showed up and checked in on her. He answered some of her questions about the pain...explaining that it hurts to breathe because it's basically worse than having broken ribs (since they took one out to use in the surgery). He decreased her IV fluid....which they think will reduce the amount of fluid coming out of the chest tubes. He's going to check on her agian in the morning and hopefully he'll be able to take the tube out sometime tomorrow.

It's getting close to time for me to go in for the 4:00 visit, so I'm going to wrap this up. Please continue to pray as she is dealing with this pain.

--By the way...she's received a whole lot of flowers! She absolutely loves them and wanted me to tell everyone THANKS!!! I'm sure she'll tell everyone herself as soon as she gets a chance to.