Turning the Page

After this post, I'm going to stop making every post entirely about Jamie's condition and the days spent in ICU with her or in the hospital waiting room. I may include brief updates within posts on other topics or one post per week devoted to it. I find that after a 12+ hour day spent in preparation, travel, waiting, visiting, waiting some more, traveling some more, I just need to not have to spend yet another hour or two on a post recapping it. I'm burning out and I'm not even the one doing most of the work involved. My sister is the driver and the one communicating with the nurses and doctors and then phoning a dozen or so family and friends with updates.

Jamie was calmer today. They upped the anti-anxiety med. She slept more. We all went in one at a time. Mom and Carri read Psalms to her. At one point she grabbed the Bible from my sister and found I Corinthians 13, the chapter defining love, stabbing her finger on it emphatically. So Carri read it to her. Then Jamie asked to see Mom.

I didn't go in to see her until after 4pm. The first thing she wrote on the clipboard was "What is your name?" That threw me a bit but after I wrote 'Joy' followed by 'sister-friend' she began to write back things that indicated she was making correct associations to the things we have shared. She fell asleep in the middle of something she was writing to me. During the next five hours she asked for Carri or Mom but never me.

I suppose I could have asked to go back again to say goodnight around 9 but I confess I was so engrossed in making notes in the FOS storyworld file of thoughts I'd had about one of my stories that I lost track of time. For most of the morning and afternoon before my visit with Jamie I'd been reading Wally Lamb's The Hour I First Believed. But after I returned from ICU I got out my netbook. Tried first to access my blog but apparently the hospital's server has blocked access to the entire Blogger site. Today was the first whole day that I did no crocheting tho I'd taken a large bag with several bookmark projects in progress.

We stayed until after 10 tonight because Jamie's biological sister was flying in from Alabama and her plane landed in Portland at 9PM. Jamie smiled for her but wasn't able to keep her eyes open. They'd already given her the night meds around 9, I assume, as that is when the were giving them every other night this week.

She is still off the respirator. For two full days now. I'm not sure what further milestones she needs to reach before they release her from ICU.