Life on the Regular Ward

Ryan here attempting my first blog post...Kelly can correct what i get wrong but the days have blended some.  Monday morning Kelly's Dad, Arie and I took the train up to Cambridge to get some normalcy into Arie's life.  Tuesday I put Arie in daycare for said normalcy and that night Kelly's dad went back to London for one more night as he was flying out the next day.  Meanwhile Jansen was transferred to the regular ward.  This meant that there would be no more one on one nursing help.  All the nurses on the ICU thought that'd be great but it just meant Kelly would be much more responsible and tied to Jansen's bedside.  To say the least it was a bit of a shock to the system.  Tues. night Jansen's pain meds wore off and he was inconsolable.  Thankfully Dad B. was there to share the nights activities.  It took until 4:30 in the a.m. until one of the other mothers in the room said "he may be in pain"...and one of the nurses said "well he's allowed pain meds".  Useful information.  After some morphine the room was a bit more conducive to sleep.  I received a phone call early Wednesday morning from a very weary sounding man saying the last thing I probably wanted was advice from my father-in-law but my presence was required in London.  Needless to say I left immediately.  My mother had come in from the states Tuesday and wasn't quite on our time Wednesday so i took Arie to daycare on my way out of town.  We've had some real angels through all of this giving freely of their time and car seats, picking us up and dropping us off and food keeps magically appearing in my house...we couldn't do this without God's hands moving through our church members.  Thank you from the bottom of my heart, that's where I keep thank you's.

Throughout this week Jansen gets stronger and less stuff attached to him.  It's thursday night and after another day on the ward he's completely off of oxygen and they removed the last needle from his body.  All that's left is a feeding tube.  The only thing slowing us down now is his incision which they can't decide if it's infected, have you ever heard of a sterile infection?...I'm pretty sure that's an oxymoron.  They left him on oral antibiotics for it and will check again tomorrow.  His breast feeding could use improvement but i don't think that will keep us in London, we're hoping for a transfer soon.

Kelly had another encounter with the surgeon but she'll have to tell you about it.