I got 6 hours of sleep last night. Crashed out on the couch in the parents area at midnight, woke up at 6am, struggled to stand at 6:20am, and headed to check on Charlize.
This was the first night both Chantale and I stayed over and took the time to sleep.
A particularly hellish day, it was alleviated by talking with Isabelle our nurse at the ICU about a lot of the details surrounding post-op recovery (what to expect, etc). Then, after I sent Chantale home to get some rest, I talked some more with her while she worked. There were a lot of friendly moments with a lot of the staff which was nice. After spending numerous 12-hour shifts with these folks (thus over 24 hours (if not more) in 2 days) with many of them, it’s impossible not to feel joined in some bizarre way.
I hit a low point late in the afternoon when the parents of the post-op baby sharing space with us came in to spend time with her. Their baby is still struggling and who knows when they’ll start taking tubes out of her or even allow them to hold her. You can imagine how that hit me as I held Charlize tightly and rocked her to sleep and then couldn’t let go. I finally put her down when those thoughts were added to how I started thinking about how much I miss Kyle (who’s picture we have on Charlize’s bed) and had to excuse myself to the lounge. When I got back, a few more tears slipped out. Our nurse saw this and drew the curtains for privacy and came talk to me for a bit. I really appreciated the fact that it was a slow saturday and she was able to do this for us.
Chantale ended up coming back earlier than expected but she had realized it was the FIRST time she had ever been away from Charlize for more than 3 hours! The only other time she had been away was when I sent her off to watch Harry Potter with James a few weeks ago! She did get to spend some time with Kyle, though. Anyhow, together we were able to get settled in and then settle Charlize down. We even managed to spend a few moments alone in the lounge. Heck, we fell asleep next to each other – or so I thought we did! Turned out that they came to get her and she fed/ rocked Charlize until 2am when she came back to sleep.
This morning, after a quick wake-up, I went to get coffee and then took care of Charlize while Chantale slept until about 9:30am. I left at noon to come home and bathe/shave/nap and just now got off the phone with her. We’ve been moved from the ICU and are back on the 7th floor in the general ward. Still no idea of how long we’ll be there as they upped the dosage of propranolol from 2.5mg to 3mg. Not sure of the effects. Although she hasn’t been having spells (trust me, last night’s meltdown at 8pm would have normally resulted in one) she has been getting desaturated (dropping down to 70) while she sleeps.
So, that’s the update. It’ll probably be Chantale’s turn to post sometime tomorrow. I need to get some rest now… I’m still feeling a little fragile to the point that just now, watching some of the videos that were taken of Kyle recently for the first time, broke me down again.