Monday, November 13th

What a busy day! I had hoped to be able to post earlier than this ( it’s 10:00pm) but it’s been very hectic today and Kerrie’s room STILL has no internet. The IT department is “working on it”..maybe in a day or two. The nurses have allowed me to use on of their computers, so that I can get an update on here. WE LOVE THE STAFF ON P2 ( and at Henry Ford in General).

Kerrie was wide awake, at 5:00am, watching TV.. I know this, because I was also wide awake at 5:00am pleading with her to turn the TV down so I could sleep 🙂

Doctors rounds started at 8:30ish and seemed to last all day long. Dr.Jana,and the BMT team, are very happy with Kerrie’s progress.. though Doctor Jana was quick to remind us that we may not see major changes for a month or longer..

regardless of how long it takes, they are very encouraged that she will be able to regain her strenght and regain movement/speech ability.

Although nothing is ever definate, Dr. Jana said she feels we have probably made it “over the hump” and can start working on recovery now. I pray she is right.. I don’t think any of us could handle another period of time like we had when she was in ICU.

One of her nurses, Carol, came to visit her and when she was leaving she told Kerrie she would come back to see her again later… Kerrie looked at her and SAID “O.K.”. I darn near fell out of my chair. It’s the first time I have heard my sisters voice in more than two weeks.Her speech was garbled, but we could definately understand her.

Someone from Speech Therapy came to evalute Kerrie today and what though found was interesting… Kerrie has absolutely no trouble picking out words when looking them, but has problems with pictures of things. She couldn’t pick out the picture of a house, but she could pick out the card that had “house” written on it.

It was the same with “Cat” and “Hammer”. I was surprised by this and thought the pictures would have been easier, but it all depends on what part of the brain has been damaged.. still thought the pictures would be easiest.

We tried using a laptop, and having her type things, but this was only moderately successful.She typed her age easily enough, but when asked to type her name she entered “kerreerrreee”. This may be in part to her hand shaking, due to weakness, or the keyboard being so small it may be difficult for her to read.

The therapist asked her to spell the name of one of her cats and she entered “aftsrks”. So….picking out words is not a problem for her.. spelling them may be another issue all together. For now, the therapist feels the laptop may not be the best answer for her and is going to bring a large groups of word cards for Kerrie to use. This may help with communication a great deal!

They also plan on seeing how she is progressing with swallowing. This makes me nervous, because they plan to give her water, etc. to see at what point she can’t swallow. She can’t swallow at all.. so I am not sure I want to be there when she starts choking.. I will just have to trust the know what they are doing.

Physical Therapy came in today as well.. they are suggesting that Kerrie needs to be seen by the Neurological Physical Therapists, as they will be able to more help to her. She is going to need aggressive therapy, 3+ hours a day, and they thought she should go to a place called RIM – Rehabilitation Institute of Michigan. What they didn’t understand is that she CAN’T go there.. she can’t even go to the Rehab floor of Henry Ford.. due to the environment she needs as a transplant patient. She can’t just go someplace else..They wouldn’t be equipped with the type of enviroment she needs and, even though our house would be suitable in a few more weeks, we would not be able to give her the care she is going to need at home.

The rest of the day was kept busy with the nursing staff constantly checking her, changing IV’s, taking blood pressure, etc. I was supposed to be giving her nasal spray and suctioning out her mouth on the hour.. but there was almost no time to get this done in between all the doctors and nurses coming to see her.

Tonight, when Mom got here, she helped get caught up on the nasal spray and mouth cleaning and then Kerrie started pointing to Mom and then to her right leg. We couldn’t figure out what she was trying to say and the she started trying to speak. It sounded like she was saying “right leg.. right leg.. right leg..” over and over again and she was being VERY forceful about it. We asked if she was saying something about her right leg and she shook her head no.. we asked about the left leg.. she shook her head no.. I asked if she was saying something about her leg and she shook her head yes..and just kept saying “right leg.. right leg..” We never really did figure out what she was trying to say and she was just as frustrated as we were. After all this Mom said “I heard you said O.K. to someone today.. say it for me.” Kerrie shook her head no, and Mom said “Oh come on.. you said it for someone else.” Kerrie scrunched up her face, eyes closed, as if thinking really hard and said “O.K”

It took a lot out of her, but she did it.
Ron came to visit tonight.. Kerrie looked at him, smiled and said “Hi”. She has really been trying today. Her speech is difficult to understand, and very garbled, but the small words are understandable enough. We’ll start with those.

When I went to give her the 9:00pm round of nasal spray, eye drops and mouth cleaning she barely moved.. she stopped snoring long enough for me to do it, but I think she slept through most of it 🙂

She is absolutely exhausted from the workout she’s been given today and I hope she sleeps well tonight… ENT will be in, sometime around 8:00am ( or earlier) to do their “every-other-day-round” of suctioning out her nasal passages and her throat.

I think I dread this even more than she does!

Jenn