October 7, 2011

Hello Everyone!,

Last night Mom said that Donnie slept for a 3 hour period straight which is a miracle.  He slept on and off but longer periods without waking up.  This is great!  Thanks for your prayers in this matter.

The wound vac was not working this morning when I arrived so the wound vac nurse was called in to fix that.  It is only Friday and the complete wound vac change is scheduled for tomorrow so they only changed out the top adhesive part and got the tubing changed out so the schedule for the total wound vac change would not be interrupted especially with the Tuesday surgery he is going to have.  This way he only has to endure that change out one time while he is awake.  The reason the wound vac stopped working is that now that there isn't as much drainage from the wound there was a blood clot in the end of the valve that is the first exit point from the bridge on the wound vac.  Once they put a new one of those on and got everything stuck back down the wound vac started right back up.

The physical therapy people arrived shortly after the wound vac fix and again Donnie was able to sit himself up on the side of the bed.  The wound is so much smaller and looks great!

Mom had gotten some rest last night so she just went to the hotel to shower up and then I picked her up and drove her to 3 hospitals that she wanted to show her invention "Gripsors" to.  If you are wondering what her invention is please visit:  www.Gripsors.com and you can see this amazing tool that she has developed.  I took Mom out to lunch and then took her back to the hotel to rest up before taking on the night shift.  I went back to pick her up about 5:30PM and headed back to the hospital

When we returned, Donnie was having some extreme pain again and was kind of wiped out.  He had been given a lot of prune juice and other stool softeners which I think was making him nauseated.  He had about a 4 hour time slot there where he felt miserable.  Mom reported this morning that he was quite restless last night but all in all he had an uneventful night.

My good friend, Lynn from Mesa, Arizona came into town this evening because of a bowling tournament so she called and picked me up for dinner.  Donnie was in no shape to even have her come say hello so I just met her at the main entrance and we had a really nice time out.  I said my night time goodbyes before Lynn picked me up around 7:30PM and just went to the hotel after dinner.

Hopefully Saturday will be a good day!

Thank you for your continued support in prayer,
Don and Carol Schirr and Sharon Zelinko