october 12, 2011

Greetings,

Last night Don actually fell as asleep at 9PM and slept until 11PM. He usually tries to stay up until midnight until they get his vitals read but since he had such a traumatic day with surgery and trying to play catch up with the pain medications he just got worn out. He is learning that when his feet and legs hurt if he just sits up on the side of the bed and swings his feet and rubs the bottoms of them on the table support he can get the circulation going in them and it helps the pain relieved some. He got up three different times in the night to sit up so Mom gets up to help him. All in all he slept a pretty well and felt pretty good most of the day. About 2:30PM he started to feel quite nauseated. That lasted until about 7PM and then it seemed to lift. He has been watching TV and drifting in and out of sleep.

I got real sleepy about 6:30PM so I crashed on the bed in the hospital room while Don and my Mom watched a baseball game between the Tigers and Rangers that went into extra innings. If you all were watching you know that the Tigers lost...not good news for those of us who were born in Michigan. Better luck next time.

The case worker for Don stopped by today with a few choices we might have down the road with Don. Once we can get him up in a wheel chair he will most likely have to go to a "skilled care facility" where he would be a resident until he could be able to go home. That was a fancy way of saying he will have to be in a nursing home situation on the rehab wing. Don did NOT like the sound of that, but it is only temporary. At least that is what I keep reminding him of. She mentioned that he would probably have to transfer to a facility here because the transportation in a medic van is not covered by insurance and we would have to pay for that. Well, that would be a very high price and we are not willing to pay for that so I am most likely going to have to look for an apartment to rent temporarily instead of the hotel situation so I can lower my expenses. We are figuring we will have to be here another 6-8 weeks before we could consider driving him home in my van. The hang up for getting him in a wheel chair is going to be two-fold: 1) His level of healing with the stitching of his hide back on to the muscle and not tearing it by being transferred to the wheel chair and 2) The amount of time he is going to be able to tolerate sitting without getting severe pain. The plastic surgeon has to give us the decision on the first issue and the orthopedic surgeon on the second issue. The case worker mentioned that Don is on a NO WEIGHT BEARING RESTRICTION for 6 weeks and as of Saturday he will have 4 weeks in. Next week he has the 5th surgery to see if the wound can be closed and then he can have a week to heal from that and we will be on the 6th week.

We are believing that the bones are healing on their own and that no surgery will be needed to fix anything with the bones at all. Please join together with us in prayer on this.

I am headed back to the hotel to get some real sleep. Mom is well rested and ready to take on the night shift. God bless her soul! Keep us in your prayers and pray that Don can heal in an extra special, fast way.

Love to you all, Don and Carol Schirr and Mom (Sharon Zelinko)