Update 1/24/08

Hi,
Nicole and I worried all night about Derek. We wanted to go downstairs and see him so bad. We were told that we could go see him at 9:00 this morning and Lucy was supposed to order some rice soup for us to take to him. We had decided to also take him some instant oatmeal with some jam in it. Lucy arrived with the soup and wanted me to heat it a little more. When I did that I tasted it. It was awful. It had no flavor what so ever, but we took it along with the oatmeal like we were supposed to in our lunch boxes. When Lucy buzzed to get us in, a nurse came to the door and took the food and told Lucy that we couldn't go see Derek because they had a life threatening situation with a patient in ICU. Nicole and I were heartbroken and our first question to Lucy was, "Is it Derek?" She told us that the nurse had told her it wasn't Derek. We talked her into seeing if we could see him later in the morning. At 11:30 we got to go down and we took Easy Mac & Cheese for him to eat. We put on our gowns and plastic sandals and proceeded in. He was sleeping, but we woke him up because we didn't know if we would get to see him again and we had to know how he was doing. He looked great. He said that he did have some neck pain. He hadn't eaten anything that we had taken him this morning because it was cold when they gave it to him. We had been told yesterday that the nurses would only feed him if they had time if we didn't feet him ourselves. With the emergency, they didn't have time. We got him to eat about half of his Mac & Cheese. They are using his catheters and doing it about every 3 or 4 hours. His spirits seem good. We had sent his IPOD and headphones down this morning. He is listening to that to pass the time. They said that we could go back down at 3:00 and feed him again.
When we came back up stairs we visited with the new American and family. We found out how Greg got injured and that he has a little girl who is 4 years old. His wife couldn't handle the situation so she left him 2 months ago and now his parents have had to move into his house and care for him. His Dad is only here for a week and then his Mom is staying and taking him back home by herself. Nicole helped him get his blog site up on his computer. It can be tricking getting things on the computers here because things are censered.
We had some great news today on our floor. Paul, one of our Australian friends, got movement in his foot last night. They were trying to analyse what muscles were making it move. Paul also had a cyst removed and bone marrow implant 13 days ago. He is a lower injury and had some leg movement before he came because he had quad and ham muscles. It is so exciting. When someone has a change, everyone gets so excited for that person. You kind of become a family among the ones that can speak English. You visit, talk, share ideas, and if someone doesn't have something that you need you just ask someone else. It is kind of like being back in college and living in a dorm.
Nicole and I went to Wal Mart again today. We had our list and a list of items some of the other patients needed. It is pretty bad that we are beginning to know where to find everything in the store.
We got back around 3:00 and made Derek some more Easy Mac and we had bought some delicious fresh baked rolls, so we took him one of those along with a couple bananas, water, and Gatorade. We both got to go in and see him. He ate almost all the Mac and the roll and enjoyed his Gatorade. We woke him up again this afternoon, but we wanted to make sure that he got something to eat since he would have had to go until morning if we didn't. We have to say again, He looked good and his attitude was great. I can't tell you how wonderful it feels to see Derek go through a surgery and come out of it looking so great after all of the horrible experiences we have had over the past two and half years. They told us that he can come back to our room between 8 and 9 tomorrow morning. We can't wait. We told him to hang in there and try to sleep to make the time go by quicker so he can get back upstairs.
I made Nicole (in her words) a delicious breakfast sandwich for dinner. Now we are going to tidy up the room so it will be ready for Derek in the morning. We will write again tomorrow.
Love, Kathy, Nicole and Derek