Removing the Drain and Changing the Dressings

They just removed the drain from Annie's back.  It was a thin, long tube about the diameter of a coffee straw that ran up nearly the full length of her back to help drain blood.  Then they removed the dressings to check the incision and apply new dressings.  The old dressings were rather thick and were completely saturated with blood.  It's nice to get those off and get fresh ones on.  Her incision runs from the base of her neck all the way down to her gluteal crease, but it looks really good.  They expect it to continue to ooze for a while, but say that it should stop fairly soon.

Annie is still not voiding on her own, so instead of continuing to have to straight cath, they are putting the foley back in.  They'll try to remove it again tomorrow and see how she does on her own then. They are also stopping her feeds for another day and just going back to IV fluids since Annie's bowels still aren't working.  They'll give more Miralax today and give her more time.

The word on the street is that she'll be moving up to the IMC floor (intermediate care) as soon as a bed is available up there.  We also have the green light to get her up in her wheelchair.  I'm not sure she'll tolerate that very well, but it's really important to get her sitting up to help prevent pneumonia, so we might do that later this afternoon or tomorrow morning.