Road to Recovery

This is definitely a challenge.  I have 26 staples in my abdomen forming a backward L.  I have been slowly/daily getting better-but it is slow.  I have had trouble sleeping at night, but last night was my best night so far-7 hours.  Basically I sleep for 2 hours get up for an hour, take another vicodin, sleep for another two hours get up again and so on until about 7 a.m.  I am not eating too much yet.  I manage to get enough vitamins and calories to keep me going, though.  I have pushed myself walking a little bit.  I walk around the block two times per day.  By then end of each time I am wiped out, but my body does feel a little better.  As my nurse said when I checked out-water and walking will get you through this.  It has been great being at home with the guys and Karen.  Just being around them lift my spirits-although the boys wear me down quickly.  They have adapted pretty well to everything including my latest challenge.  Brenden throws paper airplanes to me and knows if they don’t get exactly to me, he will have to run and get it.  Jaxson brought a board game next to the couch so we could play it a couple times.

Overall I am doing well-just trying to take it easy, rest and heal as quickly as I can.  I got some great fruit from my fellow Pictura employees and Sam stopped by to see how I was doing.  Also Bethany brought us more food today so we will be eating good for some time.

Again a special thanks to Karen’s parents for taking care of everything while I was out.  Karen’s parents do everything for us so Karen can focus on work and the kids while I am out of it.  Of course A big thanks to everyone who has sent cards, comments, thoughts and prayers.  Those things really lift my spirits and push me to go forward.

Chris

A special thank you to everyone!

I made it home today in record time.  Dr. Sielaff was impressed with my progress so I got released earlier than expected.  As excited as I was, the boys were even more excited.  Jaxson just ran up and hugged my legs.  I ate a quick/very small lunch and then headed for bed.  I just woke up from a 2 hour nap.  Thanks for all you comments, thought and prayers.  I have a lot of reading to do as I recover.  Right now I just feel so blessed to be home so soon.  Thank you for Sarah and Karen for keeping up the blog even after they were exhausted.  I will write more in a day or so.

God Bless,

Chris

Discharged!

I just wanted to let everyone know that Chris is heading home from the hospital today! I think he’s really looking forward to his own bed and some good food to help his recovery along. Thanks again for all of your prayers, well wishes, visits, and phone calls to Chris and his family!

Sarah

Sleeping Beauty

Hello!  Karen doing a quick post tonight.  Chris is hanging in there.  He’s been very tired.  It seems to be a common theme that when someone visits him he’s either sleeping when they get there, or falling asleep after they’ve been there about 30 minutes.   I don’t think he realizes how much he’s sleeping as he tells me he only sleeps for a couple hours at a time with a few hours in between naps.  The doctors took him in for some scans today as he’s had some yellow goo seeping from his incision and he vomited a couple of times today.  They didn’t seem to find anything.   He has really bad heartburn and that is making it dificult for him to eat.  That’s about it on my sleeping beauty.  Just a side note, Brenden lost his 3 rd tooth today and he’s very excited about a visit from the tooth fairy tonight.  It came out during dinner tonight and the first thing he wanted to do was to call Chris and let him know about it. 

Well, that’s all I got!  I need to go find some cash!

Goodnight!

Karen

Thursday update

I just spoke with Chris and he informs me that he’s doing pretty well.  He said his pain is very manageable.  He still doesn’t have much of a voice though.  He says he’s up for calls, but he has to keep them short to save his voice.  His phone number is 612.863.2403.  He’s been able to sleep a lot this time, so he thinks that’s really helping his recovery.  I was hoping that when he was sleeping that he would unplug is phone, but that’s not the case, so when I called, I woke him up.  So this would probably be another reason to keep the calls to a minimum.

I’m going to print all of the comments from the blog later this afternoon and deliver them to him tonight, so I encourage you all to leave some comments as Chris would love to hear from you all!!

Sarah

First Day Out of the Gate

Hello to everyone!   I thought I’d give everyone a quick update.  I took the boys to see Chris this morning.  He was doing pretty good.  They let him start drinking water this morning-he was very happy about that.  He also took a long walk this morning, so he’s up and moving–slowly.  Chris said his pain level is sitting at about a 4 or 5, which is pretty good considering the surgery was just yesterday.  He’s been snoozing on and off, but as usual can’t seem to really get some sound sleep.  His goal is to get out of the hospital by Monday afternoon.  Dr. S had said a typical stay is 4 – 6 days.  The boys were happy to see dad as he was excited to see them.  Jaxson had told me at bedtime last night that he wanted Chris to come home-NOW!  But they had a wonderful day hanging out with grandpa yesterday.  They made airplanes and went outside and played swing kickball(new game we invented).  Jaxson was just tired and that’s when he misses dad. 

That’s about all for now.  Another big thank you to everyone for the prayers!  Also, thanks dad for chasing after the monkeys all day!  One more thank you to the family members who hung out at the hospital–long day!

Love,

Karen

a message from Chris

You could probably imagine my surprise at finding a voicemail on my cell phone from Chris.  He wanted to touch base about “communicating” with everyone.   His voice is a bit raspy since he had a tube in his throat and he hasn’t been allowed to drink water yet, so it’s hard for him to talk.  So he wanted me to let you all know to hold off calling him until Thursday so that he has Wednesday to drink some water and get his voice back.  He also doesn’t have his cell phone at the hospital just yet.  To quote him, “I’m doing pretty good…the doctor said he took out 70% of my liver so that’s kind of weird and crazy, but I’m doing good.”

Needless to say, it was good to hear his raspy voice.

Sarah