Nancy continues to do well.\u00a0 We\u2019d like her to eat more real food but at the moment she is not much inclined to do that.<\/p>\n
She got a big red heart-shaped pillow for her new year.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t know about these things until last night.\u00a0 The gentleman homeowner who hosted the potluck last night asked if Nancy had gotten her pillow?\u00a0 He had multiple by-pass surgery in the same hospital a few years back.\u00a0 When I said I had no idea what he meant, his wife brought out a large red pillow in the shape of a heart.\u00a0 This had an image of a heart on it and over that someone had drawn each of the by-passes that had been done inside his chest.\u00a0 Also, about a dozen people had signed it \u2013 doctors, nurses, and family.<\/p>\n
I got home to find an e-mail asking the same question?\u00a0 \u201cDid Nancy get her special pillow?\u201d\u00a0 I\u2019m I the only one that didn\u2019t know of these?<\/p>\n
Well it seems that when your chest is split open and then closed again that in the weeks to follow you have an urge to cough frequently.\u00a0 So as to keep it from opening again when you cough, you are told to hold a pillow tightly against your chest.\u00a0 A stuffed teddy bear is sometimes given but any pillow would do.\u00a0 It seems the red heart-shaped ones are the \u201cspecial\u201d ones \u2013 it could be considered a badge of courage and a statement that one survived.<\/p>\n
Much of the very high-tech equipment was gone from Nancy\u2019s room today.\u00a0 There remained a gizmo on the floor at the foot of her bed making the sounds of a little stream tumbling over rocks.\u00a0 This is part of a \u2018chest drain\u2019 and its purpose is to allow any fluid, blood, or pus to exit the \u2018pleural<\/em>\u2019 cavity by way of a long tube.\u00a0 Translated into English this means \u2018from the hole in your body where they were working.\u2019\u00a0\u00a0 Seems to me the original meaning (now said to be side<\/em> or rib<\/em>) has gotten lost somewhere along the path from Greek to Latin to Middle English to the World Wide Web.\u00a0 A wine maker would recognize this as a \u201cwater sealed fermentation lock\u201d with a vacuum assist through the water causing the bubbling sound.<\/p>\n Each of the two doctors on the floor visited briefly today and listened to her heart and lungs and pronounced her in good shape \u2013 for the shape she is in.\u00a0 Many times a heart patient in the ICU will only encounter one or two doctors during a stay of a few days.\u00a0 Today was Nancy\u2019s 36th<\/sup> day there and she is on their (the doctor\u2019s) third or fourth rotation.\u00a0 Somewhat uncommon we were informed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Nancy continues to do well.\u00a0 We\u2019d like her to eat more real food but at the moment she is not much inclined to do that. She got a big red heart-shaped pillow for her new year.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t know about these things until last night.\u00a0 The gentleman homeowner who hosted the potluck last night asked … Continue reading “FRIDAY — Pillow Talk!”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-155","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p72iNf-2v","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rocknponderosa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rocknponderosa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rocknponderosa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rocknponderosa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rocknponderosa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=155"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/rocknponderosa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":158,"href":"http:\/\/rocknponderosa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155\/revisions\/158"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rocknponderosa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=155"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rocknponderosa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=155"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rocknponderosa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=155"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}