Six Days Later

Looking back over this blog, I realize this online journal is now mostly about daughter Juliet, not "Arts and Crafts".  And it has been almost a week since it was updated.  (Thank you, Sharon, for your text last evening asking about Julie and prompting me to write an update.)  Here is what has happened since last Tuesday:

Julie was taken by ambulance from Denver on Wednesday, a five hour trek over the Continental Divide, which resulted in more trauma to her pressure wounds.  She was placed back at the manor, sans IV medications, all being replaced by oral meds.  Good news: she was transferred from the hospital back to her "manor home." I returned a few days earlier back to GJ.

Since arriving back in Grand Junction, she has been kept on bed rest and on a special mattress and bed at the manor that shifts her body weight to try to help her heal the back thigh area. We have read half a book aloud since then: Virginia's Diary. And Gene reads his book to her.  We play Word Chums. 

Today she was angry, mad, and frustrated at being kept in bed.  She broke her iPad Saturday (it fell off the bed), so I got it replaced and found some little cord attachers that will keep her phone, her Fire, and her iPad all hooked up and disentangled from one another. Maybe.  And I bought a one year guarantee so that if she breaks it again, the warranty will cover it.  Bad news was that I got a glass cut from the screen; just glad it was not Julie that received the sliver in her hand.

And we have had several talks about hospice being brought in to help her.  These were not easy sessions, but realistic at this time. For now, the APH (atrial pulmonary hypertension) is being managed, but APH is a progressive heart disease under the umbrella of COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease), a diagnosis that results in eventual death.  The good news is that the lasix are keeping fluid from building up around her lungs, and she is breathing easier.  We will not discuss the bad news.

And I finished the Promenade Shawl.  Never will I knit that again as those garter stitches never seemed to end.  But eventually, finished...