Morning Report

–Afternoon Update–

Derek is back on the 6th floor and enjoying life as the most popular boy in school. His surgery was announced to the nursing team on Tuesday morning and apparently a big cheer went up. They’re thrilled to have him back.

In other news, the salad bar in the cafeteria had baby corn AND artichoke hearts so I’m having a mighty fine day.

I arrived at the hospital around 9:30a and was able to head straight into the PACU. I was a little stunned by how good Derek looked. His skin tone looked great & he was awake and alert.

He has a few less tubes in him, and a few more are coming out as I write this. They’re going to add a few little stitches to his drain ports this morning, and then hopefully move him upstairs to the 6th floor.

When I walked into the PACU one of the nurses came up to me and said, “Whoa! I almost didn’t recognize you!” I’m not sure if she took care of me a month ago, but perhaps she was there when Derek and I were in there together the first time.

One of Derek’s surgeons stopped by this morning to check on Derek. He’s taking Derek off of his IV pain meds and transitioning him to oral meds. That’s a good sign as well. He said Derek’s bilirubin was at 7–my guess was 5–but he said that likely had to do with the blood transfusion. He also mentioned that it takes a while for the bilirubin to leave the skin, and since Derek’s was high for so long, it will take a little while for it to drop back down again. I’ll try to get a good shot of his eyes later so you can all see the difference between a bilirubin count of 28 and 7.

That’s all for now. If we move upstairs or I hear anything else, I’ll let you all know!