The road to recovery...

Hey there! This is Sara, Astra's oldest sister. I thought I would give some updates as to how she is coming along on her road to recovery. To begin with, her surgery went really well. She went into surgery around noon and they were finished stitching her up by 5:30. By 7:00 pm we were all thrilled to find out that she was off the ventilator and in her new room in the ICU. By the next day she was already moved out of ICU and back to med surg- her home turf:) The doctors were very happy with how well she was doing. But despite her progress, she is in a lot of pain. They are doing their best to try and stay on top of the pain, but it is going to be a long road to recovery.

A few points:

• they pulled out her chest tube today, which was a good sign- but painful to remove


• they have started weaning her off the epidural


• she has been running fevers on and off but at the moment it has leveled off


• she still has the feeding tube in, and it will pry be there for awhile


• she sat up yesterday in a chair for the first time- baby steps, baby steps:)


• she walked with assistance yesterday for 1st time to get chest X-rays


• The catheter will come out tonight


• She will have a blood transfusion tonight: which have brought about many Twilight jokes


• * they washed her hair today and she is a whole new woman!


• she is still pretty out of it and sleeps the majority of the day

Astra has been a champ and has been progressing better than we could have expected. We are grateful for every milestone she passes and are so proud of her.

At this time Astra is not ready for visitors yet, we will keep you posted. Thanks for all your love and support:)