Tuesday - 5/4/10

Jill's rehab is going well. She is walking around, albeit a few steps slower than her normal pace. It is also very tiring to walk very far or stay upright for any extended period of time. To give you an idea of where she was on Saturday, she got up for the first time in a little over a week and walked about 40 feet. Each step was approximately 6 inches and each required a 15-30 second rest between steps. At the end of her first trek, she was feeling dizzy and needed to sit down pretty quickly. It's amazing to see what happens to the body when you lay around in bed for 9 days.

Today, she faced some old demons and went back to the baseball field (this was the first game that we were in the same dugout where this whole event happened). She stayed clear of the dugout as there was lot of activity in there that would of been too much to handle based on her condition but she did get out and talk to a lot of those people that were there that day. She was moving pretty slowly and got a bit tired, but there is no stopping Jill when she sets her mind on something. At the end of today's game, Jill got to talk to the boys on the team that were there that day and told them that everything was alright and that she is doing a lot better. The team even scored a couple of crucial runs after she got there to secure the victory.

There were a lot of people that were involved in the process of getting Jill home, and I could never mention them all, but I would like to mention a three others.

Fire Department/Paramedics - This group of guys arrived at the field with Mary and Mathew performing CPR. The guys were very calm and brought order and confidence to the scene. They went about there job in a very routine manner but did everything they needed to do in case of further emergency. This emergency occurred when Jill's heart stopped in the dugout and paramedics shocked her back to life. They proceeded to keep her breathing until they loaded her in the ambulance, where her heart stopped again and they shocked back to life again. I wasn't allowed in the ambulance as there was too much going on but I heard that they had to shock her a third time on the way to the hospital. These guys did a fantastic job of keeping her alive until they got to the hospital.

Dr Wogensen - Allie and I were at the hospital for approximately an hour when Dr Wogensen, Jill's new neurologist, entered and started talking to us about hypothermia, the "cooling process". He explained that the process was new at Methodist Hospital in Arcadia and that the process was having a great deal of success around the country. Methodist is actually the first hospital in our region to have hypothermia available to its patients. My sister-in-law quickly got on the phone with other doctors to research hypothermia with her colleagues and only heard positive results. We made a quick decision to perform this on Jill as all arrows pointed toward the likelihood of reducing any potential brain damage or other damage to her major organs. It is interesting to note that no other hospitals do hypothermia so if Jill had her accident outside of the area for bringing her to Methodist she never would have been able to have this procedure performed as her condition was too dire for her to moved. As it turns out, hypothermia was not only new to Methodist, it was really new. Jill was the second person to have this procedure performed. The first happened the day before. Praise the lord for new technologies and Dr Wogensen for identifying Jill as a candidate for this procedure.

Dr Bindra - Dr Bindra, Jill's electrocardiologist, and new friend for life, was the one who performed the ablation and implanted the defibrillator pacemaker in Jill's chest. He did some major things for Jill and all of them came out fine. He will be the one that will monitor the reports that the pacemaker produces. One swipe of the wand near Jill's chest and a report is sent to the company that produced the machine and they, in turn, send it to the doctor. It's very similar to your home security system. The monitoring center tracks activity at your house and they send a report if there are any problems. Dr Bindra even took on all of Jill's background questions about what schools he went to and when did he graduate. Jill got a little nervous in the beginning when she found out he was younger than she was. After Jill talking to her connections at UCLA, Dr Bindra got Jill's blessing and he also did a fantastic job.

To get from point A, where Jill collapsed at the baseball field, to point B, where she walked out of the hospital alive and able to start the recovery process, was an amazing example teamwork in which everyone had to perform their roles to perfection. If there was one weak link in the chain, a life would have been lost. I've mentioned some people and groups that worked in unison for 9 days to allow to Jill to go home but there were many more. The ER doctor (whose name evades me), the infectious disease doctor (Dr Nieber), the pulmonary doctor (another whose name evades me), the other cardiologist (Dr Baruch, the plumber) and, of course, all the nurses. The CCU nurses watched Jill 24 hours a day and took great care of her as did the cardiac unit nurses. Both groups went beyond the call of duty. A grateful thanks to all of these people as they all were very proud of their contributions to Jill's recovery (and they should be). It truly shows that all the work they put in on a daily basis really pays off.

I've talked to Jill about having visitors and also about handling all of the offers to bring dinner over for the family. For the short term, it will be ok to stop by the house and visit Jill between 6:30 and 8pm each night starting tomorrow. We are going to give that time frame a try and see how it works. I would ask that everyone be fairly brief so that each person that stops by gets a chance to say hello. The dinner planning is still being worked out. I'll get back to you as soon as we have a plan. Again, thanks to all who have offered and or provided help. Your support has made things much easier.