Saturday (day58)

Good evening all. Shawna is enjoying all the attention lavished on her by the diligent doctors and nurses here at Haldimand War Memorial Hospital in Dunnville. Its great that members of our congregations here can visit for her stimulation. Keep up the good work! Visiting is 8 am to 8 pm(you can stay a little later, they don't get too excited). The most important thing which happened over the last few days regards her trache. I called the discharge nurse from Hamilton to say how much we enjoyed coming here but also to query her about having the trache removed. It had been corked for 120 hrs plus. Normally they remove traches after 48 hrs corked but Hamilton didn't want to send her away in a possibly unstable condition so they wanted Dunnville to pull it. The doctors and nurses were unable to do that here right away as they don't hardly know her yet. Once Hamilton realized, after my persistance, they gave the order for it to be removed so they were responsible for the order. As a result the trache was successfully removed at 144 hrs. Since I felt responsible for this order I have stayed here so far 23 out of 30 hrs to make sure there is no complications. They do not stich anything closed they just cover the skin and trachea hole with a dressing. When she coughed up some secretions she blew the dressing almost off. I have to keep my hand on the dressing to assist her coughing. She is quite stressed during these episodes fortunately she only had 4 of them in the first 24 hrs. They are becoming less frequent and now her trache is almost closed making it easier to cough and clear secretions. We are pretty sure the secretions were caused by the trache tube as her lungs are pretty clear according to her doctor. In a few days everything will be closed up. It will only take 24 hrs to close the trache . Everything else continues to progress. Communication is starting to be more apparent with hand squeezes and smiles and eye blinks for affirmative answers. This has been a real blessing. Requests from us for her to move body parts and help work against range of motion exercises are responded to a little quicker now. She seems to have good connections to some muscle groups. She will be travelling to Hamilton on Tuesday for her appointments with her doctors. Last night we we suddenly visited by some of the Slaa family. Apparently Fraser Slaa came in for an emergency apendectomy and now he's on the same floor as Shawna. When Shawna went for her wheelchair ride she went to visit him. He's doing pretty good but has to stay for a few days due to infection.

Thanks be to our heavenly Father who continues to uphold his children and give them healing. We continue to pray for Shawna's breathing to stabilize and her brain to make connections. Thank you all for your continued prayers and support and may God bless you with a beautiful Sunday of Praise and worship as we remember the blessed resurrection of our Saviour Jesus Christ. Al and Deb