Day After - December 11, 2014

Day After

Posted Dec 11, 2014 4:19pm

I am back at the hotel after taking a shower so I wanted to take a moment to update you all on Joe's progress. I stayed with him in his room last night. Every two hours the nurses came in and turned him on his side and gave him medicine. He had a pain pump where he could push the button when he needed an extra dose of medicine. He rarely pushed it through the night. He could push it once every 8 minutes so 7 times an hour and he pushed it about once every 2 hours. Needless to say by morning, he was hurting. The doctor determined it to be the fact that he got behind on pain control. He ordered oxycodon immediately and upped the amount of medicine that could be given Joe through the pump. Because the oxycodon is like taking a quadruple dose of Motrin we wanted to make sure Joe had some food in his stomach which by now was beginning to "wake up." So he ate a piece of dry toast. The medicine helped get the pain under control. This process was from about 6:30 a.m. to 9 ish.

He has two ivs - one in each hand. Makes it a bit uncomfortable. They did take blood this morning but i haven't heard back yet how the "counts" are. Physical therapy came by at 10ish. She got Joe to sit up on the side of the bed and even to stand up. He got pretty lightheaded but he did it. She comes back at 4. Todays goal is to get up out of the bed and to the rocking chair in the room to sit for a bit.

So many things going on. He can start eating today but only bland foods because we do NOT want him to throw up. They will stop the pain pump tonight but leave the catheter in until tomorrow.

Thanks for all the comments and prayers. We read all the comments to Joe and he is very aware of all the people praying for him. He told me to do a new Facebook update this morning to update everyone. I'll update again or ask Jessica or Teresa too.