Update from Mike, 2/2

After a long night and morning, Karen's heart settled back into normal sinus rhythm at about 5:30am. Finally I felt comfortable enough to get some sleep. Thank you to Matt our nurse, who our daughter Morgan thought was extremely cute, and a very helpful short doctor who I can not pronounce his name. They stayed close by the entire time helping to get Karen's heart beat back to a regular rhythm.

The doctors came by late today, which was great because it gave Karensome time to rest. Well the doctor's attitudes definitely mellowed a little into a more cautious, but still pushy care giver. The objective is still clear and remains the same. Karen has to get off of the ventilator entirely and the longer it takes, the more difficulties present themselves. However, there is a fine line between pushing someone with the focus being on moving forward while also building confidence and achieving success at the same time, versus pushing someone with the only consideration being reaching the final objective. Everyone can not be pushed the same way. They all have the same objective, but they are not all clones of each other. Seeing success while also building confidence seems to me to be the path to take.

So today instead of setting the goal at 8 hrs breathing on her own, they instead set a more realistic goal of one hour, hoping to show Karen that she can do it by herself. After the other day Karen had no confidence in her ability to breathe entirely on her own. If we could get her through the hour. Then she could see that she can be successful. It seemed like the longest hour ever. Karen struggled from the first minute, but there was no way I was going to let her fail. So I was her cheerleader the whole time. Karen successfully made her hour on her own. Great job Karen.

Next she got on the teadmill and walked for a total of 16 minutes, with an occasional stop to rest, which was one minute more than yesterday. Karen was beat the rest of the night, but all in all it was a very very successful day!!!