March 27, 2010

Charlie seems pretty good this afternoon - he's been awake for the
last four hours or so, without sleeping at all.
He's still dozy, but has been awake and fairly alert all afternoon.
His external pacing box has been removed. The wires are still there,
but they are wound up and taped to his chest now, which means we've
got one less set of wires to negotiate.
He sat in his chair for about two hours this morning and took a few
steps between chair and bed. The plan is to try to get him out of bed
tomorrow, put his drain buckets into a mini shopping trolley and
attempt to get him to mobilise a bit.
He is looking better this afternoon too -less pale and with a smidge
of colour in his cheeks.
You may remember that he became a bit phobic about sticky plaster
after he had his cardiac catheter in 2008 - so we were pretty anxious
about getting the dressing off his chest without traumatising him even
more.
I was allowed to peel it off, so I did it millimetre by millimetre and
stopped whenever Charlie asked me to. We managed to get the whole
thing off with no problems and he remained very relaxed throughout,
which was great. It's so important that he's able to trust me in this
situation.
Another bit of good news - he should have had his dressing replaced,
but once we got it off, his scar is so beautifully healed that it was
decided to leave it without a dressing.
His scar looks brilliant - it is dry and healed from top to bottom,
and will be a neat hairline when it has had time to heal properly.
So that's where we're at - Charlie has just dozed off as I'm writing.
Now we just need to help him get his appetite back, which will
hopefully happen once he's off the morphine.

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