Out of the ICU!
I think Pop might be on track to win the contest for who gets the most accomplished during quarantine. In addition to getting 2 new lungs, re-learning how to breath, swallow and cough, he still found time to send me beautiful flowers for my birthday weekend. Thanks Pop! ♥
The big news for the weekend is that Dad is out of the ICU! He is now in the Stepdown Unit with “a corner view and a better tv,” which is a bonus because this will be his room now for the next few weeks. The focus on the Stepdown Unit will be on pain management during healing, improved coughing and swallowing, walking everyday, and getting post-transplant medications dialed-in.
The coughing part is particularly critical. When you get news lungs, the surgeons can hook all major plumbing back up in your chest, but they cannot re-connect all of the usual nerve endings that prompt you to cough. So when Pop is congested, he won’t feel like coughing. But he very much needs to! Part of leaving ICU is that now he needs to force himself to cough every couple of hours. As you might imagine, forcing yourself to cough one week after a double lung transplant feels: not good. Pop’s chest cavity is still numb from the epidural, but the surrounding parts of his body (shoulders, neck, etc.) are starting to wake up to serious harassment they have recently endured. Adding coughing to the daily plan doesn’t make things any more comfortable. So while the last 24 hours have been painful, they still represent forward progress. The hospital pain team also had some success today improving Dad’s mixture of medication to keep his pain more under control so he can keep coughing.
Swallowing is the other key function to work on in the short term. Even though Pop passed his initial swallowing test, he is still restricted from drinking “thin liquids.” Everything he ingests, even water, has to be thickened to the consistency of motor oil to give his windpipe plenty of time to close before swallowing. The days of being excited about applesauce were short—Dad is ready for a decent cup of coffee! So exercises to improve swallowing will also be part of the regular routine.
The doctors continue to be very encouraged by Pop’s daily progress. His motivation to continue apace (besides the coffee😊) is to make it out of the hospital completely by May 24. The mantra to get there: Keep walking. Keep Coughing.