SamBeller.org

Sunday, April 09, 2000

Almost Home!

Dear Sam’s friends & family,

We just have a couple small hills to climb and we are OUT-A-THERE!

He sat up in his wheelchair on Friday for 30 minutes. Crying and quite uncomfortable, he did it. He was smiling once he got used to it. He did indeed to look quite tall with his new height on him. It was again painful getting out of the chair and back to bed. When he’s hurting like that, he doesn’t breath as well - so we had to pour on the Oxygen to help him recover from the transfer back to the bed. He did bleed some through the incision during for the first time. We were proud of him.

Saturday was Sam’s first day that he was comfortable just using Tylenol with Codeine - no Morphine since Friday. We got him to his wheelchair without tears. He required 4 liters of Oxygen to maintain good Oxygen saturation levels. However, he loved being up. We got a portable Oxygen tank and went wheeling around the hospital. He cried when we got back to the room ... and laughed we just turned right around to go wheeling around some more. He stayed up for 3 hours and we just finally put him in bed because he was sleepy - not hurting. He bled more again.

On Saturday night, the nurse changing the dressing over his incision and found that some of the site had opened up and the incision wasn’t holding. It had opened up in between some of the sterile tape strings going up his back. It looked a little infected right there also. Bummer. So, Dr. Bobechko will have to evaluate it Sunday morning and let us know what we’re going to do about that. Hopefully it won’ t delay our discharge.

We wanted to see Sam not requiring any Oxygen at the time we left. However, with supplemental Oxygen, he can breath alright without the BiPAP machine assisting him. So, we can use our portable Oxygen to get him home.

If Dr. Bobechko says we can leave, we’ll just be waiting on the Home Health agency to staff our temporary in-home nursing. We had hoped for Sunday evening - but they may not be able to staff it until Monday. So, with these two factors in mind, we’re pretty close to getting Sam home to resume his recovery in the comforts of home ... and a newly painted room ...Our friends, David & Jana Meyer were kind enough to paint Sam’s room. Yea!! We’re so excited about that - it’s light aqua - the background for his water. We can now stencil some fish swimming around on his walls like we’ve been wanting to do. Sam loves fish aquariums.

We’ll probably have 2 months of in-home nursing to help us manage his recovery .... then, we hope, life will resume to Sam’s normal active schedule sometime after that.

Thank you for so many prayers on Sam’s behalf. Please continue to lift him up to the Lord and pray for that incision site and the Home Health agency to get good nurses. We’re almost there and so thankful to be on the other side of this huge mountain!

We’ll keep you posted on Sam’s discharge.

love,

Kelly & David