Update 1/23/08

Hello Everyone,
I will start where I left off yesterday. While Derek was in message, Lucy and a girl from anesthesia came to find us to sign the anesthesia authorization for surgery. The girl also told Derek that he had to shave his beard. Derek wasn’t happy about that and Lucy asked him why he didn’t let the beautician shave his beard. They agreed upon him shaving most of it, but leaving a mustache and the hair on his chin. Which Derek did before he went to bed. Lucy explained what we needed to do last night so the nurses didn’t need to come in.
An American family arrived late yesterday afternoon. They are from Arkansas. There is the Mom, Dad, and their son, Greg. He looks to be in his twenties. He has a C-6 spinal cord injury. We have introduced ourselves, but they are still getting settles in. Lucy took them to their first trip to Wal Mart this afternoon.
We ordered pizza and an appetizer from a European restaurant last night. It was a nice change. I am really craving some fresh vegetable, a baked potato and a thick steak. Derek can’t have anything to eat or drink after 8:00.
This morning the nurse came in and gave Derek two injections in his butt. He was glad that they gave them to him there because he couldn’t feel them. At 7:00 they put a catheter in him that was made up of part of his cath kit and part of theirs because of the latex issue. There supplies don’t say if they are latex or latex free. I guess that it isn’t a big issue here. They tried to tape the whole thing together but it was working too well. At 7:50, an orderly came with a gurney to get Derek. He wheeled it up beside his bed and motioned for Derek to jump on. We tried to tell him that Derek couldn’t do it by himself. He once again motioned for Derek to get on. Derek turns to me and says, “ If I could jump on myself, I wouldn’t be here. I would be home.” Finally he got the hint and went and retrieved a tiny nurse. She started untucking the sheet and I though that they were finally getting the idea to pick both the sides of the sheet up and move him sheet and all. Wrong, she didn’t want to do it that way. She got up on the bed and tried to move him. Wrong. The she motioned for me to help. The three of us finally got him on the gurney and he was off to surgery.
Nicole arrived home from Beijing around noon bearing gifts, groceries from the United States, pictures and lots of stories. She had a blast.
Around 12:30, Lucy came to get us to go see Derek in ICU. When we got there, they said that only one person could go see him. So we agreed that I would go. I had to take my shoes off and put a pair of their plastic sandals on and a disposable robe over my clothes. Derek was awake and complaining that his neck hurt and he wanted a pillow. They said that he couldn’t have a pillow for six hours. He had to lay flat. He was very cold and his teeth were chattering. No hair on his head didn’t help. I got them to put another blanket on him. The doctor came in and Tony translated what he had to say. He said that they drained the cyst and took the cleaned the spinal cord where it was adhered to the spinal column. He said that the color of the spinal cord was good, it looked normal and everything now seemed to be straight and flowing. He felt that with the surgery and getting his own bone marrow stem cells implanted at the same spot that Derek stood a good chance at getting some improvement. He said that there was some swelling around the spinal cord. I think that this is normal after surgery and moving him around. They had told us this after his accident. They did ask if he had hypertension. I told them that he had had it while he had been hospitalized before, but it has been normal. I was high while I was down there. They told me to plan on bringing him something in the morning to eat as they don’t serve food. I asked what he could have and they suggested rice soup. I asked if they could order us some, so we will have it delivered in the morning. Only one person can go and visit the patient in ICU for a few minutes at 9:00 in the morning and 3:00 in the afternoon. They gave us a list written in Chinese that we needed to get together and send down to Derek. They translated it to English and we had to sent a face cloth, toilet paper, a spoon, straws, water, and a lunch box. The last one we had to question. Lucy said that it was something to take your lunch in. As we don’t have our version of a lunchbox, we had to question more. We finally found out that we need a container like Tupperware to take him something to eat. Fortunately we brought three from home. They said that we couldn’t see him again today, so we pleaded with Lucy to see if we could see him one more time. They agreed that I could go down at 3:00. Tony took me. Derek must have complained enough because he had a pillow under his head when I went down. Of course he asked me for another one and when I said no, she wanted me to double up the one he had. No. He kept asking me how long he had to stay there. He wanted me to check his catheter, so I looked under the sheets and his bed was totally soaked. I told Tony and he told the nurses. They had to roll him from one side to the next and change his whole bed. That really bothered me since he was supposed to be flat on his back. We have come so far and taken such a risk to get a chance at getting some improvement that I don’t want to take a chance at something going wrong. When I got back to our room, Lucy came in to see how Derek was doing. I told her about the leaking catheter and soaked bed. She asked us about what Derek normally does and we showed her how his catheter kits worked. She said that she would take it down stairs and show the nurses to see if they would do that every 3 or 4 hours instead of soaking his be continually and have to roll him and change it. I’m not sure if it will do any good since we have done this half a dozen times already for Tony, nurses and doctors. Nobody has understood us yet.
Nicole bought some new DVDs in Beijing, so Derek will have something to watch while recovering. He is supposed to spend two nights in the ICU and then he can come back to our room for us to take care of him. We will feel a lot more at ease once we know what is going on with him. He is down there with no one who speaks English. He has nothing to watch or do while he is awake.
I ordered the traditional Chinese duck for dinner tonight. It was good.
Thank you for all your prayers. We are so hopeful that this will be the miracle that we have been praying for. Love, Kathy, Derek and Nicole