22/03/12

Hi, all.  Norm returned to Townsville on an early flight this morning (that is, Thursday 22nd), so it's up to me to keep the tradition of daily updates alive.  Margie left late yesterday afternoon, and I was all by my lonesome.  I told myself that this would test my mettle, and determined to walk the 45 minutes to the Hospital, which I felt would be very therapeutic before spending the day in the ICU unit.   It's amazing how weary one can get just hanging around.  Unfortunately, the rain that North Queensland had experienced followed me to Brisbane, and the rain became reasonably heavy about 10 minutes before I was due to head out.  Having no raincoat or umbrella (how did I know the Townsville rain would follow me!) it was a taxi to the Hospital this morning.

When I was cleared to go in to see Julie, she was sitting upright again, same as Wednesday morning.  However, she was a lot more subdued, looking rather sad.  Before I was allowed in, the nursing staff had cleaned around the trachea area.  As the hole in the neck was larger in diameter than the tube, there was quite a bit of seepage of yuckie stuff (no medical terms here, wait til Norm is reporting again :-).  From past occurrences, we knew it was very painful for Julie when they tried to clean the wound and replace the protective bandage/plaster under the 'hood' placed over the trachea entrance.  Dammit, if this doesn't make sense, please accept my apologies and use your imagination......

 Anyway, the nursing staff advised Julie that they were still worried about her lungs, even though she had had the bronchoscopy yesterday, and that they were to take another exray of her left lung.  The Xray determined that there was still a lot of sputum in the lung, and another bronchoscopy was to be scheduled for later today.  The nursing staff had a request for the ET team  to check the trachea area, as it was obviously causing pain to Julie and concern to the staff.  When the team eventually arrived quite late in the afternoon, it was determined that Julie would have the second bronchoscopy, followed by the second tracheostomy.   Poor kid, but I guess the doctors can't always get it right the first time. 

 Whilst waiting for the ET team to arrive, Julie had a couple of minor highlights for the day.  She asked me to get the puzzle page out of The Australian newspaper, so she could do the sudoku with my help (not my intellectual help - my job was to be able to identify each individual square by name the horizontal squares 'A', 'B', etc through to 'I', and the vertical sides '1', '2' through to '9'.  Julie and her good mate Margie, who would have regular weekends with Julie visiting Margie in Cairns for the weekend, or Margie flying down to Townsville to hang out with Julie, always did these puzzles together.  Anyway, today my job was to hold the paper at the right sight distance for Julie to study it, and she would eventually rasp out "B2, No. 5". I would write '5' in the appropriate square, and so it went on.  Oh, before I would let Julie start this, I insisted she look at the "Circuit Breaker".  For those of you who don't know this test from The Australian, it consists of a circle of 10 letters, with an extra letter in the centre.  One of the aims is to make one word using all 11 letters.  I said "See if you can find the 11 lettered word.  Probably all of 6 to 8 seconds later, Julie said "Communistic".  Spot on!  The nursing staff couldn't believe it.  I said "That's my girl!"  Anyway, sadly the nurses needed to prep Jules pre the theatre visit.  I was disappointed that because of lack of time, I wasn't thus able to let Margie know that Julie got the first Sudoku out'.  (Maybe tomorrow, Margie.)

 The other highlight for Julie was that Richard Skoines, a good mate from UQ Uni days, timed his visit to arrive before Julie was whisked off to theatre, and they had approx 20 minutes of conversation by Richard, and then uncertainty by Richard in trying to lipread Julie's responses.  It's always nice to know that qualified doctors sometimes have to struggle....  Anyway, they had a lot of fun trying to communicate, and it uplifted Julie's spirits.  Another good friend, Russell, arrived after work fairly late in the day, and hung out with me for half an hour, hoping that Julie might wake up within that time.  As it was after the theatre ops, she didn't.  Russell hopes to call in again Friday evening to see if he will find Julie awake.

 Not being religious, instead of praying, I am wishing upon a star tonight that Julie  will be more comfortable tomorrow, and that no further ops will be needed.  She deserves a break, beautiful person that she is.  Oh, Ian Lacey, who had a serious accident years ago, is hoping to schedule a visit to Julie also, as I believe her cousin, Dr Colin Brice also hopes to within the next few weeks. 

 Well everyone, if I hit the send button now, I think it will still be today - Thursday.  Best wishes to all of you who have so regularly sent your best wishes to Julie and our family.

Kind regards Val, Norm, Kylie and Darrel