the PICU was different... i'd never thought about it before, but if i had, i would have imagined it the set up differently. abe wasn't awake yet but out of surgery and we could finally go see him. around 9pm we entered the PICU through two huge doors, then wound around to a room surrounded and enclosed with curtains. there was abe. he looked small compared to the wall of machines he was hooked to. he was intubated and had so many monitors. still sedated, you could tell he had been through a lot....but he was there and alive! he made it through. he looked so pale and very still except the machine breathing for him. i talked to him because i knew he could hear me. my dad, dave's parents, and my brother pat, took short turns coming back to see him. my mom was in europe and we couldn't get a hold of her. everyone else went home, relieved that abe was to this point.
abe had a nurse sitting at a desk at the foot of his bed at all times. this was comforting. they seemed thorough, and a little more relaxed than i would have imagined-- being the picu and all. around 10pm dave's sister and her husband brought us a bag of stuff from our house. it was greatly appreciated since we were both still in our dirty yard work clothes. about then, abe started to wake up. he was uncomfortable with the breathing tube. later he told me how stressful it was to wake up with something down his throat. so as soon as he was awake enough, they took it out. that was hard. it made him cough (ouch) and it was super painful to even breath. his throat was sore and every time his chest moved it hurt. they gave him his pain medicine pump that he could push every few minutes. he was thirsty, but still couldn't drink anything.
dave and i both wanted to stay right by abe, but in the picu, only one of us could sleep in his "room". they didn't mind if we both stayed as long as one of us was awake. we decided to do shifts. i wanted to stay awake and watch abe anyway so the deal was that i would wake dave up at 3:30am and we would switch. dave was exhausted and fell asleep.
abe was pretty out of it, but would wake up in awful pain about every hour. i sat huddled in the bottom corner of his bed. i wanted him to know i was there and i wanted to comfort him, so i rubbed his legs and feet almost the entire night. i needed to watch him breath, watch his heart beat, and be there when he woke up. finally, around 5:30am, the nurse was checking him or something and dave woke up. he wanted me to lay down, so after he promised me he would stay awake and watch abe breath, i fell asleep.
i woke up a little after 7 to the sound of abe and dave talking away. it was a completely different scene than i fell asleep to a couple hours earlier! i couldn't believe it. abe remembered everything and looked so much better. my brother pat stopped on his way to work to see us and he couldn't believe it either. he did not expect to see abe looking so good. it was amazing.
abe kept improving and by the end of the day, they were ready to release us from the PICU!
prepping him to move to post-op
pat gave him a hat so he wouldn't have crazy bed head in every picture:)
later, abe told me he was nervous in the ICU. he shared a room (divided by a curtain) with a three year old boy that cried and cried. i talked to the boys mom and luckily, he was going to be ok and i was happy to give abe that report....but, between his concern for the little boy and being hooked up to all the monitors, it felt like a pretty intense place.
happy to be leaving the ICU--and making progress!
