Less Drugs…YAY

So yesterday was a good and bad day, but I will definitely take the bad as it wasn’t really a step back. They have reduced her drugs in her body, again, the only IV drip for pain is Precedex and Fentanyl and even those have been stepped down. She gets a constant feeding through a tube as well as scheduled antibiotics, steroids, antacids and methadone.

Because Raena has less drugs in her system, it is a joy to see her awake more and moving, however, the bad part is simply the fact that she is more agitated and aware of what is going on. I did see all 4 limbs move on her body yesterday which is a good sign, altho movement on her left arm is very minimal, she moved it. She was also putting herself in very awkward positions, but this must have been comfortable to her because every time the nurse or I would put her into what looked to be a more comfy position, she would move back to her old one. She was moving her head a lot, which was also a good sign. She would pick it up or move it left to right. Although most of the day she keeps her eyes closed, you can find her peeking and when you see her, she tends to close them again, I am not sure of the game she is playing there, but she definitely knows that you are looking at her.

Nikki clipped her nails the other day, but I think I am going to cut them way back because she would rather dig into human flesh than her stuffed animals, and she has broken skin a few times now lol. I am happy she is so strong in her right arm, but boy does it hurt after a while. For now, I will take this as a big win 🙂

You can tell she gets very agitated because she starts to flail her arm around and kick her right leg a bit and her heart rate zooms about 150, in fact at times it was hitting the 170s until the nurses could give her some ativan and extra fentanyl. One time we tried Benadryl but that seemed to have very little effect and she was only able to get about 15 minutes of rest.

They are currently scheduled to remove the tube from her Wednesday at 7:30am, so fingers are crossed and positive vibes are being sent. In order to prepare her for this, they have been slowly exercising her lungs by doing something the nurses call “sprinting.” This simply means they reduce how much the machine is working for her to make her start breathing on her own. They decrease it to 4 breaths per minute for 4 hours at a time. Yesterday she did magnificent on this!

The hardest news came yesterday that Kaiser thinks that she is stable enough to be transferred, which is good, but they want to transfer her to the Sunset Kaiser in Los Angeles, basically next to Hollywood. This can pose a difficult time for Nikki and I to always be with Raena and take care of the girls.