Kate Update - Friday 11/18/17


Friends of Katie,

What a difference a day makes!  This time the results tilted in the direction of positive.  After a very challenging night, the balance of the day was very restful, and Katie is much much better.  The below is a photo from the hospital looking west at the Smith Tower. 


What the team believes happened yesterday was that when Katie threw up, she aspirated some of the fluid and started the infection in her lungs.   She had a high fever in the morning and an elevated heart rate.   They put her on a strong antibiotic and placed a cooling blanket under her and packed ice all around her. 

By 11:00 am her fever had begun to come down and her heart rate began to slow.  She was able to rest for a huge part of the afternoon and evening.
Twice during the day, the nurses got Katie up to do the “dangle”.  Both times she stood up, took a couple of steps and jumped back in bed exhausted. 
Later in the evening, she started to do what is called “storming”.  It is something which is very common among patients with brain injuries and results in her moving around restlessly.  So restlessly in fact that she actually pulled out one of her IV’s. 

All in all, a great rebound day.  The team is hoping she will actually begin taking some nutrition in through her nose tube tomorrow morning.  It will be an important step to get some food in our girl!   

We continue to be so very grateful for how the community has come around Kate and our entire family.  It has been over a week and we are all tired.  Our prayer is that that we can give each other lots of grace and space to help Katie with this next step of her journey. 

Comments

  1. UnknownNovember 19, 2017 at 10:46 PM

    I am a friend of Kim's in Spokane and my husband and I are praying for Katie! Susie & Ed

    ReplyDelete

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