Cali looks and feels like she has been beaten! These pictures don't do her bruises justice. The one on her upper arm is just from the blood pressure cuff.
Here's another comic relief story; this sweet woman is Margaret. She is the surgical ICU's social worker and is the one who helped us get the hand and feet casts of Quincy. But she also was the butt of a joke between all of us. She is about 8 feet tall (as you can tell from the picture of her walking away from me) and walks kind of like a vulture, very hunched over. She dresses VERY elegantly. When Cali was still coming in and out of consciousness, she made this very scared face and asked, "Do I know that creepy stalker woman?" She was referring to Margaret, who kept peeking in the windows to her room to see if some papers she had given Josh had been signed. But all Cali saw was this fancily dressed, extremely tall vulture peeking in on her. Josh called her the Grand High Witch. We saw her again after Cali had been moved to the Women's Center with her dog which is a therapy dog. Guess what? The dog looks just like her!!!
Here's a pic of Al and George hanging out at the hospital for a few hours. Alex playing the ipad and George zonked out. We all can't seem to catch up on our sleep. I'm sure it's as much emotional as it is physical.
Here are Oak and Mo playing doctor on one of Oak's stuffed animals. Oak was telling Mo everything to do; "Now you hold his head and I will cut his tummy. He will be fine, but you need to hold him still." It was pretty cute. Oak is handling things as well as could be expected after waking up from a nap and having her dad doing CPR on her mom and then a bunch of strangers coming into their home and then mom and dad gone for a few days and having to stay at everyone else's house. She is very clingy to Josh, and it takes her a few minutes to warm up to Cali each time they go to the hospital. But all in all I would say she is doing well.
The latest on Cali; no fever for 24 + hours. Bleeding has slowed way down. She is up and about mostly by herself now, even though her dad and I want to still help her. She is still only on a liquid diet mostly because her bowels aren't working yet like they should. The plan for right now is to take out the umbrella (filter) on Thursday (if things continue to improve) and then home on Friday. A lot of IFs have to happen between now and then, but we already have seen such an improvement in this week that I think we can be fairly realistic with hoping for it.
The reason for the fever and bleeding is because she had a small clot in an ovarian vein. It's not an infection, but her body was reacting like it was. They did put her on an antibiotic just to cover their bases, but her body really just needed time to heal itself. When you consider all that she's been through - cardiac arrest, multiple times she stopped breathing, 2 major surgeries in the belly area in a few hour time period and a blood loss of about 21 liters, plus the loss of a child - she's healing quite well. We all know it's because of the power of prayer. Please continue to pray for her mental and spiritual strength as well as her physical. We worry about how this will all effect her when she has time to actually think about it. But she is strong, and miracles happen!
Original post by
Natalie
