Our Road To Recovery Day 21
Today started as usual, a date with the treadmill at 8:30 sharp. Karen is becoming a rock star with the physical therapist. Karen has really become much more confident with every step. She is so much more sure footed and her pace has improved 100%. Her rest time between sets has declined during her twenty minutes on the treadmill.
Karen's breathing trial goal for the day was 8 hours. She reached her goal of 6 hours the last two days, but it was a struggle for each of them. So today's 8 hours was a little worrisome, but Karen knows the only way out of here is to keep battling and improving everyday. The first 4 hours went pretty smoothly without and any major struggling on her part to breathe while also keeping her numbers up. For the third day in a row Karen made six hours on her own off of the ventilator. Now we were in unchartered territory. Her breathing became much more labored and brought along with it pain in her chest. Karen started taking deeper breaths which put more pressure on her chest cavity thus pushing against where her chest was cut open from one side to the other. She began to have more difficulty with every minute, but she battled through the pain for each minute. At 6 hours and fifty minutes the respiratory therapist saw that Karen was really laboring to breathe so he put Karen back on the ventilator. Karen was disappointed that she didn't reach the goal the doctor's wanted her to reach for the day, but as I pointed out to her, she did not fail. She went fifty minutes longer today and that is a success not a failure. Small steps will lead to big ones. Great job Karen!
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