Evening Update, Day 1 of Recovery

What a long day it has been! Jennie is still hurting quite a bit, although they did increase the medication enough that she is able to rest some, and they also gave her lasix to reduce the swelling. Her hands in particular have been very swollen all day, which typically happens when she gets fluids through an IV.

The doctors kept going back and forth, but they finally decided after testing some of Jennie's fluid discharge and discovering that there was a relatively small amount of blood in it, that they won't go back to surgery, at least for now. They do believe that she has some internal bleeding, but they think it is a fairly small amount. They decided instead to give her blood as needed and continue to monitor it in case the blood loss were to pick up, and hope that reducing the blood thinner will allow her body to stop the internal bleeding itself without surgery.

We are still hoping that Jennie will be able to make it through the next few days without any major complications or scares like we had today. They typically say the first three days are usually the hardest, and we hope that today was the worst of it.

On a side note I wanted to explain a little more about exactly what kind of condition Jennie is in right now. She has an NG tube coming out of her nose that pulls blood and other fluid from her digestive tract. It is uncomfortable, but it helps keep the swelling of her abdomen down which is supposed to be the most painful part. There is a drain coming straight from her abdomen that also helps pull the fluids out, and is suctioned be a bulb. She has a central line IV in through her neck that is the source of all her medication, fluids, and blood. And of course she has a catheter which takes care of the rest of her fluid retention issues.

I just took a short break from writing to move Jennie on her "air mattress" they use to make movement easier on her. We also sat her up a bit in the bed and she had to cough several times that were very productive but also painful.

We ask again that you keep Jennie in your prayers, we can certainly feel God's presence through all this.