STEVE'S AUNTY SPENT A WEEK IN INTENSIVE CARE IN THE PA HOSPITAL...
Steve's Aunty Ethel has been terribly sick and in Intensive Care at one of the big hospitals in Brissie...
She had to travel down here on her own, as both of her sister are now much too old to travel with her. It has been very hard of them as they worry about her and struggle that she i going through all of this on her own...
Fortunately for us, we have been in Brisbane over Christmas, so we have been able to go visit her in the hospital each day. We first visited her a few days before she went in for surgery and she was having some major heart turns each day. She knew that without this surgery her time with us would be very limited...
The doctors in Brissie were very reluctant to operate given the severity of her heart condition and her age, but somehow she managed to convince them that if she didn't have the surgery she wouldn't survive anyway, so she really had nothing to loose as if she went whilst they were operating it was only marginally earlier than what she would have lasted if they had sent her back home without having the surgery.
In the end, she was taken to theatre on Christmas Eve and of course, the things the surgeons were concerned about did actually happen with her suffering from major complications during the surgery.
The cardiologists at the PA Hospital are remarkable doctors. There is no way that someone at the higher end of their 80's suffering the complications that Aunty Ethel suffered should have made it out the other end.
We went up to visit her on Sunday evening and had a chance to speak to her doctors...
Her life hung in the balance and it was very much touch and go... She not only had complications during the surgery, but now her blood pressure was all over the shop and her liver and kidney's were failing..
She looked terrible, she was heavily sedated so that she wouldn't wake up and had tubes coming out of her everywhere...
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| A very sick Aunty |
They had her heavily sedated and told us that they would keep here this way for 3-4 days. They also prepared us for the worse, informing up that her liver and kidney function wasn't good, and they also didn't know where he would have any permanent brain damage. We were warned that they could treat the live and kidney but could do nothing for her brain if she didn't fully wake from the coma.. It was all going to be a waiting game...
We managed to squeeze in another visit on Monday and spoke to her doctor and nurse again. They had seen some improvement but her progress was slow and we were warned that he was no where near out of the woods yet... She was still heavily sedated and how no idea we were up there with her...
We missed seeing her on Tuesday, although Steve spoke to the doctor over the phone and although her progress was sleep he was very happy with what progress had been made. We were warned that her recovery would take a very long time
On Wednesday when we went up, we noticed a marked improvement. The doctors were starting to reduce the drugs and starting to wake her up. She still was unable to communicate with us, but on the few occassions she opened her eyes she would follow us around the room. We were really encouraged to see this.. She was still ventilated but they were hoping to remove her from this the following day.
Whilst we were please to see her eyes open, she was very weak. The nurses were excited as she really responded to both Steve and I and they informed us that this was the most alert she had been all day. She was having difficulty keeping her eyes open and we keen informing her that she was quite welcome to go back to sleep but she seemed to want to just look at us and follow us around the room.
Thursday, there was a marked improvement. She was still in intensive care, but today she started responding to some of the Nurses commands, eg.. Wiggle your toes.... stick out your tongue... She also tried very hard to communicate with us, although it was terribly difficult with a mouth full of tubes.
They were extremely happy with her progress though and informed us that the plan for the following day was to try and move her into one of the high dependency wards alongside Intensive Care.
This was great news for us and they suggested that we ring the following morning before coming back up to check and see where she might be...
On Thursday when we went up to see her she was able to talk to us, although with a little difficulty because she still had the ventilator in but she was very keen to communicate with us and we would have to hold her head down to hear and understand her but she was keen to chat.. We were told that they would probably try and move her out of the Intensive Care Unit the following day and back into a ward and so it would be best to ring before coming up to find out where she would be...
By the following day she had been moved into the ward and we were unable to visit her when planned as we being in a ward met strict visiting hours so as we had planned to go at 3pm and then head off to Greenslopes to visit another friend of ours, at 4pm, we had to turn the visits around and visit Alan first and then go and see Aunty Ethel... The improvement to day was absolutely remarkable with her being able to hold a good conversation with us with out a lot of effort on her part. She was able to tell us exactly what had happened to her and how she had been really sick and that she would probably take quite a long time to recover.... This sort of conversation was music to our ears as the doctors were not sure how well she would recover as she was having issues with her liver and kidney and so therefore thought she may even have some brain damage as her blood pressure had dropped dangerously low...
We visited her for the last time on Saturday before heading back up to the Sunshine Coast and were extremely impressed with her improvement. She was attempting to feed herself today although still have quite a bit of difficulty but at least she was trying... In the end both the nurse and I had to feed her...
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