Fingers and Toes

It’s certainly not good - but maybe for my standards. I painted Christi’s nails during the 7th day of her hospitals stay. That’s about the threshold of comfort for keeping a person on a ventilator. At least that’s what the doctors told me when they were placing the tube. Now, on the 8th day they’ve just weaned her pressures to 8. She’s doing well enough too. Holding 95% oxygen saturation. At pressures of 6 they can pursue extubation. Complicating What she's recovering from, she has what they call “fragile vasculature” - probably from frequent IVs, her veins often fail to sustain one for very long. When peripheral veins won’t do, their solution is a central line.  Her complicated situation and history makes only one possible location viable. That would compromise that lone avenue enough that they would rather do a port than a line. Something with durable access - at least for a while. Sometimes it’s hard not to feel that medical treatment, as life preserving as it has been for her, might be what takes her in the end. Such unproductive thoughts need to be held at bay though. 

She’s being sedated too - ketamine and precidex are being dripped simultaneously into the current peripheral IVs in both her big toes. It seems a precarious toe-hold on venal access really, but with each toe also recovering gradual flushing fluids, maybe this counts as “dipping your toes in the water” -- like the Levites carrying the arc of the covenant needed to do before the Lord would part the Jordan River providing a pathway into the promised land. The irony that these chapters are our current study in the Old Testament isn’t lost on us. Heavenly Father is such a skilled teacher!

Also relevant is the song I used to sing to Christi in the tune of the theme to Elmo’s world. “Daddy takes me camping, and puts my feet in the stream. That’s daddy’s world” Hospital camping isn’t what we had in mind for the start of our summer this year, but we’ll take it. We trust Him enough to wade in. He'll open the way, He always has. Stand in the river with us and watch. :)

“This stinks!”

Mom would say it while guiding Christi’s hand to smack the bed. Christi would laugh. “Mom gets it. She sees me.” 

It’s hard to honestly. Imagine life without the ability to see, speak, or coordinate movement changes so much of perception. Would I recognize useful discomfort? If not, would I even continue to try?

Christi’s world is sound and touch - and pain. Too often for my heart - lots of pain, especially in situations like this.

We’re in the hospital now because of the two numbers in the bottom of the frame. The first one is too low - it’s a measure of blood oxygenation. If it stays there or continues to drop, damage occurs. The second one is her heart rate and that’s too high. While good for working out, it’s not good or common for sleeping. It’s one of the very few ways she can tell us she needs help.

After tests, scans, labs, and imaging doctors tell us it’s both a virus and a bacterial infection this time. Christi and mom were right, this stinks.

Christi’s care has been steadily escalated to the point where she is now on a ventilator in the ICU. The ventilator really stinks. 

With so many things outside of her control in her life, she guards and prizes the few things she can control. Her own airway was one.

I was her helper too. For over a decade I have slept either on a beanbag outside her door or a foldable mattress pad on her bedroom floor. When she coughed or struggled I could hop up and help her clear secretions. I'm not allowed that now either. That stinks

"And...the master of the vineyard went forth, and saw that his olive tree began to decay; and he said: I will prune it, and dig about it, and nourish it, that perhaps it may shoot forth young and tender branches, and it perish not." (Jacob 5:4)

Nourishing Nephite olive trees meant "dunging" them - loosening the soil around the base of the tree and mixing in manure. Manure stinks - but it also helps the tree get the nutrients it needs to grow.

Christi is relentless though, and that's what gets to me. She knows from countless trials that when she coughs, I catch what she coughs up with the plastic catheter tip and then pull it out of her mouth - she get her airway back with my thanks and a kiss on her cheek. So she's been coughing and coughing and chomping down on the rigid plastic that has taken her airway from her. Does she understand when I tell her? Does she get that it's meant to help, or just that it stinks? As I hold her hand and watch as her body tenses and her breathing quickens I wonder.

I believe in a loving Father in Heaven who is the Master of the vineyard of our souls. He adds enriching and nourishing elements to each of His precious children's soil blessing them with surroundings and circumstances that, like manure, just plain stink. 

I also know He provides personal and meaningful comfort and help through His Only Begotten Son. And while I am eternally grateful for His ministry to me in my need, I might be even more grateful for His ministry to her. He gets it. Like no one else can, He sees - and helps her. So grateful!