9th Floor Newbie

Sooo, we were transferred up to the 9th floor, the Cardiac Progressive Care Unit, this afternoon.

It all started falling into place when members from Cardiology came down to see her this morning and she was SCREAMING while the nurse flushed her IV.  That in combination with the fact that we (read: she) was up every 40 minutes last night, had an increased heart rate and respiration rate lead them to believe that the pain control down there left something to be desired.

So, now we’re on the top floor of the hospital, with views away from the construction that had been below us.  The nursing care is more intensive than it was downstairs, which we don’t really need, but I do feel more comfortable with their teaching of postop care to us, and their know-how of handling sternum care. 

The plan is to still go home tomorrow, so long as Piper does better tonight than she did last night.  She’s on Oxycodone and Tylenol now, so we’ll see how her system does with those. 

We got another visit from a therapy dog this afternoon- Piper sat on the floor and had so much fun playing with the little bichon.  When they were leaving, she got down on all fours and started to crawl out after them!  We got the nurse in to take off her leads so that she could play a little more freely.  She crawled a little, felt pretty proud of herself (we were proud of her for trying!!!) and decided that it hurt too much to continue.  Everyone has said to just let her regulate herself, and that’s what we’re trying to do.  It’s kind of hard watching her do some things and wondering how badly they hurt.  Or should hurt.  But I guess she’ll tell us, right?

For our Colorado buddies, thought I'd share a picture of what the rooms here look like.  Overall, the experience here has been TONS better than our experience at P/SL in February; don't get me wrong, I wouldn't doubt that we were there at a bad time, or just had a sporadic bad experience.  But still...  90% of the nursing staff has been AWESOME.  Every room has a full wall of windows, which is as nice for me as it is for Piper.  There are play rooms with toys (which we've never gotten to partake in because they were outside the doors to our unit, where she wasn't allowed with no pulse-ox), open areas at the end of the hallways with couches and tables to sit at, and lots of fun pictures on the walls to look at.  The room we're in now is a little smaller than the ones we were in downstairs, but still nothing to bark about.

 

No matter how nice it is here, we still cannot wait to go home!!!