Jill is Doing Well

I’m pleased to report that Jill is sitting up and doing well. Here she is yesterday in her room at Harris Regional Hospital.

She finds that lying in bed is very uncomfortable for her, so she has been sitting all day. I think that she has spent so many days on her back that her backside is quite sore.  Everything looks good although she has a small area of infection at the bottom of her surgical wound which is all stapled right down her belly. The doctors are not worried about that and are treating her with antibiotics.

There seems to be a chain of people constantly coming in and out of her room. The system here is that her nurse attends to all the medical functions and other specialist technicians do other things. She was visited by different technicians who gave her breathing treatment, took blood and collected urine samples. Another specialist was the dietician who wants her to dramatically increase her protein levels. It seems that muscle mass is reduced by 2 to 3 percent every day that you spend in ICU and Jill was there for five days. As a result she is very weak and slow. She’s a bit like  a 78 rpm record being played at 33 1/3 rpm although the Physios had her walk from the bed to the door and back on a walking frame.

The discharge team are working on a place for her to do some Rehab. This will either be in Bryson City (about 20 miles away) or in a local facility. It all depends on where a room is available. It looks as though. It will be more difficult without us having a North Carolina address.

Pastor Jeff visited us again yesterday as did a lady named Shirley from the Baptist Church. She came especially because she saw Jill’s name on the church bulletin. 

Now that Jill is out of the woods, I’ll report on her condition less frequently.