Alarming Night

Thursday night I couldn't sleep and was sorta reading and sorta watching Craig Ferguson and the phone ran. It was 1:00 AM. "Hi it's the nurse at the Heart Institute. " I HATE that .. "Rebel is fine, but her VAD started alarming... it's OKAY everything is FINE... but she wants her dad to come and sit with her while they fix everything up. " okay... everything is fine... so the SU went off after one. I told him to call me when he got to Rebel's room and give me the scoop. So of course by now I am too freaked to either read or watch tv, so I came downstairs to the computer where I've been trying for days now to beat level 6 of Diner Dash Flo on the Go

The problem, said SU when he called.. a smaller wire on the VAD was on the fritz. The perfusionist came in and had things fixed in under a minute. He told Rebel she was fine and nothing was wrong with her. As soon as she was re-wired the numbers all went back to normal. SU stayed with Rebel for about an hour, until the BF showed up and stayed the rest of the night. SU was home by 3:00 ish AM; and I was still wide awake. It was probably about 4 before I crashed... still not able to get the mouse moving fast enough or strategically to break level 6.

The next day Rebel told me the rest of her side of the alarm story. When the nurses couldn't figure out why the machine was alarming so much and slowing down the rate, they thought she might be dehydrated - which slows down the flow. So they had her drink about three pints of water and a half bottle of gator-aid. Then she couldn't sleep the rest of the night because what goes in..... The senior nurse has been around since the first VAD was on the floor so she knows the machine really well. She pulled out the hand pump in case the thing failed. That freaked the kid out even more. They also called ICU to see if a perfusionist was on site. The ICU nurse, figured out it was Rebel and came up stairs to see what was going on and hold her hand. They love her! By then things were settled but it freaked Rebel out somewhat. As always all was well handled at the hospital. And SU didn't balk once when the call came. he was slow in moving out... took him almost 10 minutes to get dressed and out the door! We all lost sleep, but Rebel and I both fell asleep in our respective beds on Friday night very early! Surprisingly, it was probably the best night's sleep I've had since Rebel went into the hospital.


And for your enjoyment... today's aftermath of over 50cm of snow. 10cm = 4 inches... so we're digging out! This is looking out my kitchen window from the table... to the front street.
got shovels?