And the days keep rolling by...

Hi all,

This is Liz's brother again. Mom and I have switched roles, so Mom's now staying with Liz in the hospital. I've returned home, so this update is based on spending Sunday/Monday with sis before I left, and several phone conversations since then. Apologies in advance for any lapses in my memory or if I get things wrong.

First and foremost, Liz told me like 4 times to make sure I thanked everyone for their warm emails, prayers, thoughts, and warm wishes. Unfortunately, the hospital labor/delivery rooms don't have wifi (guess they don't expect people to spend more than a couple of days there, goes to show what they know!). She reads most of her email on her cellphone, or she can log in via her laptop but only by dialup. I downloaded her email at one point onto her laptop via dialup, and it took over an hour, so she probably won't be able to answer a ton of emails and she sends her apologies. But she does read every one of them and said they never fail to raise her spirits, so thank you.

Second, today's another celebration, 26 weeks today!

On Sunday, the magnesium started working and the contractions slowed down. After about 12 hours of the higher dose, though, her body started having some serious reactions to the mag(beyond the nausea, dizziness, etc that was happening the whole time). After some difficulty breathing and being on supplemental oxygen off and on most of the night, they decided to take her off it and try something else. While loathe to do so because it was helping stop the contractions, not breathing can't be good for the little ones so she agreed. After some hours (from memory 6 hrs after coming off it?), she finally started feeling better and didn't have the heavy weight on her chest any longer (I'm sure she'd be making some reference to her increased breast size here, but I can't do that since I'm her brother). They did put her on another oral anti-contraction drug, unfortunately I can't remember the name (memory says ephedra, but I don't think that's right). The contractions increased for a while, and they upped her dosage on this new stuff, and they then settled down at about 2-4 per hour by Mon afternoon when I left. She could walk to the bathroom totally unaided and was cheerful and laughing, unlike when she was in the heavy mag-induced stupor.

Today they're even less than yesterday, and Liz was in good spirits. Apparently she's gotten a nice little heat rash going over her belly where all of the monitors are always being maneuvered around. A secret one of the nurses told her: They need a lubricant on her belly for the monitors, but the stuff they use can cause problems over time, and she said that normal lotion works just as well. This way she not only keeps the monitors working, she gets the positive side effects of the lotion keeping her skin smooth and stretch-free, and the whole room smells like grapefruit. One can only guess that the rash would have been much worse if she'd stayed on the hospital stuff.

A new doctor this morning said that she dealt with PROMs a lot and even a fair number of long-term PROMs. When she asked Liz how long ago she had PROMed and Liz said 9 weeks, the doctor's jaw apparently fell to the floor.

The hospital food can get pretty dreary. It's actually pretty decent for hospital food, but imagine ordering from the same restaurant menu every meal of every day and you get the feeling. Mom the other night went out and got some chinese food for Liz, Brian, and herself as a change. Why does it not shock me that my sister is throwing dinner parties in her hospital room??

So for now, everything continues onward day by day, and strangely enough, no news is good news. She remains in good spirts most days (particularly since she's off the mag), and she's got some pictures and flowers decorating her room there. As she puts it, she's going to be there for a while, so might as well make it feel like home. She's going to try to log on herself in the next day or two now that she's feeling somewhat human again.

Liz (as remembered by Gary)

PS- Brian says Buddy is doing fine and starting to grow his tail back, but Buddy misses his mom Liz and hopes she's doing ok.