It seems that it was decided
having Julie off the ventilator for 6.5 hours the previous day was a bit too
much for her. Thus Julie's day was quiet in comparison with Monday.
The usual routines of physio, body turning, speech pathology, temperature
taking, testing of Julie's memory and awareness (100% there) and others that I
may have forgotten or was not aware of, were carried out during the
day.
However, there was another
'first': Julie was taken away for her first shower bath. I should
have asked if I could go with her. They have a large 'trolley bed'
where the bed section is encased with plastic, and I assume drains for the
water to run through. Julie is laid on it, and shower roses are
used. When she returned to her cubicle, Julie gave it the thumbs
up! Although she has been getting her hair washed generally every second
day, it is a tedious process, so Julie thoroughly enjoyed that part of her bed
bath.
Julie was fed a thickened syrup,
again with blue dye, and as per the previous day, none of it got to her lungs,
so a good result once more. When she was offered food (in the form of a
thick syrup but this time without the blue dye, Julie had barely half a
cup. Late afternoon, a three course meal arrived: butternut pumpkin soup;
a main course of a pureed red vegetable and a pureed green vegetable
covered with a white sauce; dessert was custard over a light chocolate
pudding. Julie had only a few spoonfuls of the soup, and then the custard
from the dessert. She ruefully shook her head when I suggested she try
the pureed vegetables to see if they were, say carrot or tomato, and
perhaps beans or peas. With all of the 5-star dining Julie has
experienced, who could blame her??
The nurse on duty was great, very
caring, and the best lip-reading nurse I have come across. So she was
easily forgiven when she made a mistake: she wanted to test something to
do with Julie's breathing, and said she was changing 'a' to 'b' in the
tubes. Julie started gasping and was very distressed.
She whispered out to the nurse (whom I won't name) words along the
lines of "Are you sure it's right?" I started panicking as the
nurse said she thought so, but would check on the notes. It turned out
she had hooked up something incorrectly, but acted quickly to change things and
de-stress Julie. Very
scarey for the patient and her Mum!!
Julie has decided she wants her hair
cut short. We all kept saying "Are you sure?" She replied
yes every time. So her hairdresser of probably 20 years (Sean from Siddha
Hair Salon) is flying down from Townsville at the weekend to cut Julie's
hair. How cool is that? Some would consider it over the top, but I
know it will make the experience very special for Julie to have Sean change her
hair from long to short.
Sign off time for today. I
hope it's a good one for all of you.
Val
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