Late morning, Wednesday, October 8

The breathing tube from surgery is finally removed.

As long as the breathing tube was in, Amanda could not speak to us, and with all the tubes and lines and soft restraints, added to the fact that she is under some serious pain meds, it was very difficult for her to write anything on a paper. She was able to a couple of times. She was also able to use sign language a couple of times, and then once she was able to use a special kind of large keyboard they have here where she can type out a message.

Pain medications are still being tweaked on a continual basis, and at some point today she will be given a hand control so she can have more direct control over that herself. It is important to the staff to return "control" to her as soon as practical. As you might imagine, it was very frustrating to Amanda to be awake and not be able to communicate with us. In fact, that was one of her 4 messages, "I am awake!"

Today, as soon as the "self-controlled pain med level" thing is in place, she will start some basic lung exercises. These amount to making yourself cough and also using a thing that you blow into and suck air through to further exercise the lungs. Doing this is very important to prevent getting pneumonia.

Amanda will spend the rest of today and tonight in bed, but it is possible they will try to get her out of bed tomorrow. They want her to start moving as soon as the surgeon will clear her to do so. What is happening is this: on the one hand the surgeon would like her to lay still on her right side so the wound will heal better and not be disturbed. On the other hand, the doctors know that it is not healthy to lay still on her right side for such a long time. As I understand it, that is a large part of the reason for exercising the lungs.