Day 16

Nothing but good news today.  Cindy was doing her best to get herself weaned off the ventilator by initiating the breathes of the ventilator.  This is done by setting the ventilator to Spontaneous mode.  Several times during the day, she struggled with her breathing and getting enough oxygen.  They had to give her breaks throughout the day and put the ventilator on Assist mode so the ventilator did all the work.  The green 'A' in the machine below shows the ventilator in Assist mode.  It can be set to 'S' mode which puts it in Spontaneous mode.

This is actually the machine that Cindy is using.

The doctors are trying to get her totally weaned off the ventilator by the end of the weekend.  They do not want to have to do a tracheotomty.  The ventilator should be used no more than 2 weeks (which is tomorrow).  Cindy is literally trying really hard and wee're rooting for her.

Since Debbie is the administrator of this blog, she is going to tell this story:

Last night, Debbie called her Aunt Sandy to make sure she could see where her picture was posted on this site (Memory Lane - Pictures).   She was getting the link via text messaging, but didn't know that it linked to this blog.  Long story short, it took 45 minutes to get her to get to the site and see this blog for the first time.  Needless to say, Debbie's blood pressure skyrocketed.  Sandy apologized and said "doesn't this remind you of your mother"?  Debbie didn't have patience with her mother and was running out of patience with her aunt.  Dealing with her mother was left to Cindy.  Debbie was about to tell her aunt to call Cindy and realized that wasn't possible.

Aunt Sandy sent the following email:

THANK YOU FOR YOUR TIME, PATIENCE, LOVE, UNDERSTANDING – AND

FOR BEING YOU.   XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Debbie responded:

That's not really me.  I had to make believe I was Cindy.  She has all the patience.  

Debbie told this story to Cindy this morning.  It gave her a huge smile.