Dara update

[annathepiper]

spazzkat and I are back home again tonight, folks, as of this writing. Today has been pretty much third verse, same as the first--solarbird continues to be in stable and slowly, slowly improving condition. Her head is not an issue, but there remains some concern about her respiratory condition. She's still on the breathing tube as of tonight, and they are being extra special super paranoid about taking it out, because they want to be damn sure it's okay to do so before they do it. It was really hard to get it in the first time, so they don't want to have to do it twice.

Me, I'm a big, big fan of Dara continuing to breathe, so I told 'em I'm pretty much good with that.

Dara was sleeping pretty much the entire time Paul and I were in there today; the nurse on duty didn't wake her up any of the times we were in there. But they did start her on some nutrients, to get some vitamins and proteins and stuff into her system. So hopefully this'll start giving her the fuel she needs to get her respiration settled out. We kept up with the talking to her, and hell, I sang random Great Big Sea songs at her. And discovered that singing "Ordinary Day" while holding the unconscious hand of your lifemate is, well, kinda hard. :}

But. All things considered she continues to be one of the easier cases the NICU ward has had to be dealing with. There are definitely people in worse condition there--like the boy who got SHOT IN THE EYE and whose 17-year-old girlfriend has been at the hospital for the last couple of weeks now. With, I might add, an eight-month-old baby. Then there's the lady with whom we are informally sharing the booth we've claimed in the waiting room; her fiance has been in the ICU for the last eleven days or so and from what we're hearing, he's paralyzed from the neck down. Neither of these ladies are local, so they have no local support at all. Which makes for all kinds of extra suck on top of what they're having to go through in the first place.

I produced my Power of Attorney paper today, which dramatically upped the level of information I was getting. Mind you, this doesn't mean that the nurses have been holding out on us, 'cause they haven't, it's just that there's a whole new layer of data they get to give you once you're confirmed as the person legally entitled to hear this stuff. And once the day nurse realized that both Paul and I were in the tech industry, and clued in that yeah, we can take and digest detailed data, she told us all kinds of things about what was going on. Which was something of a comfort.

Tomorrow, though, I'm going to have to call the cops and start asking about whether they've been investigating what happened and if so what's up with that. And that's going to suck. But, well. Tonight, I'm going to play my guitar because I'm feeling a powerful need for it, and because Jenna was a wise person for telling me I should do so.

Today's heroes of the revolution: cow for coming by at lunch to hang out, and for taking risu home so she could get some rest and come back and spell Paul and me tonight; jessicac for coming by with not only tasty snackies (and OMG I was about to kill for some fruit, and she had RASPBERRIES), but also Moira the Magic Baby (who we had not yet actually SEEN, and both Paul and I lamented that this was NOT the circumstance under which we wanted to see that infant for the first time), who was the cutest little thing; and last but not least mamishka, who showed up with homemade spaghetti and Caesar salad and garlic bread.

More as it happens, folks.