A rough day

Today was finally the day that I got to go up to see Donna. I took the other female night shift supervisor with me, and one of our workers, Llury, who used to be the day shift intern under Donna.

The procedure went excellent, but she's now taken an expected slide backwards. Donna has a touch of pneumonia and we had to sanitize our hands to see her today. Even though she has had a few good days, today was not one of them. Because she's in ICU, we were only allowed in during visiting hours from 1-1:30, even though we stretched it to about 1:45.

It was great to meet some of their family, and Donna really does have an amazing support group and lots of love. While we were there they were keeping her very sedated. They are still draining bad fluids from her brain and are pumping good fluids into her as much as they can and she's basically swimming in fluids, so she's very bloated and swollen looking. Donna did snap awake a couple of times while we were there, but her eyes were very glassy looking and she didn't really concentrate on anything or even look away from her husband. It was very heartbreaking to see such a strong and lively woman be so critically ill and there were a couple of times that I had to close my eyes and not let a tear fall.

Some of the good things I learned today is that Donna's husband, Gary, is quitting smoking, and will not let Donna start smoking again once she is released. He said that if she's been without cigarettes this long, there's no need to pick up one when she's better. Her sister Kathy also said that all of the siblings are going in for CAT scans to see if any more of them have any aneurysms because they've learned it doesn't necessarily run from parent to child, but can be common among siblings. They also have an amazing doctor taking care of Donna, he's one of the very very best in his field and Gary said that he keeps him updated on everything that's going on, explains everything Gary wants to know, and when Donna was in surgery for 6 hours, they had a nurse call him every hour with a message from the doctor. It's truly a miracle that Donna is still with us and has as much life in her as she does.