Day 10

5:45pm
Yesterdays blog was somehow lost.  This is how we keep our families posted and so sorry about that.

Yesterday was our last day in the ICU once a bed became available on the Step Down unit...the transfer happened last night.  We will miss all of the people who have become so involved in Andrew's care.  The ICU nursing staff and allied staff were terrific and we feel that Andrew received great care there.  Marcie and I became pretty good 'nurses' and we got the feeling that our level of participation was a little unusual, but what else can parents do?  It is a busy bit of work. 

We had the day start yesterday with a rumble and loud bang as a 4.0 earthquake rolled through the Bay area.  Your visit to San Fran is not complete unless you have had one of their earthquakes...forget the cable cars.  Next we got to see Tony, our favourite ICU fixture and respiratory technician who always made us happy, do a take down on an ICU patient who became a little disoriented and tried to do an 'OJ Simpson for the door'...nice work, Tony! (You need to be older to remember those old OJ commercials.)

Andrew is getting a pretty good workout.   Physiotherapy is getting him up a little more and at this point that is exhausting work. Debra is strong and as his PT she will not take, "no".  His appetite is returning and he is starting to devour his food.  He is not ready for pizza, but that is what he wants along with anything involving bacon...I think that bacon-flavoured Ensure would be a big hit for the teenage demographic.  Vaunna came by today from speech therapy and she is the one who will approve the advancement of Andrew's diet, and therefore Andrew is clearly in love with her.

Now we are working on moving to another hospital.  The way that insurance works here is that you have to go through approval processes, insurance providers talking and negotiating with each other, and determinations of where you will end up for your care.   The Canadian system is so different and so easy.  We are wading through the insurance system now that we have improvement in Andrew and we can begin to think of other things.  After that will be the process of getting Andrew back to B.C. and determining where he will best be served.   This means many phone calls.

Marcie got out for a few minutes today with her friend Janet.  It was a beautiful day here and a little fresh air will do her good.  Lastly, Marcie and I had a chuckle last night when I spoke to my good friend Steve, the inspiration to write a blog to keep family and friends informed.  He told me that he tries to figure out who writes the blog on a particular day.  To be clear, even though English 100 was my (Steve's) hardest university course, 100 times more difficult than second year calculus for me,  Marcie gets to edit, but I get to write the blog.  It is a great way to vent, communicate and lastly provide a document that we can show Andrew one day so that we can insist on payback,  big time payback!