Morning 4/28/10

Jill continues to progress. She is speaking better and is looking better. They are gradually weaning her off some of the medications she has been on which is always a positive sign. She originally had some challenges with her blood pressure being too low so the doctors were regulating it to keep it up. Yesterday they took her off of the blood pressure medicine completely which was great. Her poor body went through a significant trauma and is really fighting to get back to normal. In usual Jill fashion, she wants things to happen as quickly and efficiently as possible, and laying around in bed 24 hours a day doesn't fit with Jill's style, but she's being as patient as she can be.

The doctor working with her the most now is the infectious disease doctor (the nurses work with her all the time and have been great by the way). Due to her catching the aspirational pneumonia, the infectious disease doctor was brought on board to make sure nothing spreads and to make sure she doesn't catch anything else while her body is weak. Her white blood cell counts have been high and she's been fighting the pneumonia, but both made nice progress yesterday. She was also running a temperature of about 101 degrees on Monday but that came down to 99 degrees yesterday.These three items are being closely watched and are the next hurdles Jill has to get through before the cardiologist can step back in to try and diagnose what may have happened and how to proceed going forward. This will probably take a couple of days.

Jill still is having some challenges as well with her short term memory. She doesn't remember what happened that day (which is probably good) and has remembered a limited number of things since (also probably good for the time being). With all the things that she's been through it is probably better that she start remembering the more current components of her recovery than the very trying ones. We can tell her about those later. The doctors don't seem too concerned at this point as she's been through a lot and she's only been awake for two days. She's made phenomenal progress. The doctors and nurses are amazed at how much she's progressed in such a short amount of time. No doubt this is a combination of her spirit and all the good thoughts and prayers she been getting from everyone who cares for her. Keep them coming.