princess and the pea

Sorry for missing yesterday's update.  It was quite a day.  Shawnie's epidural was turned off at 6:30 a.m. yesterday morning and it was a slow transition all day as her body began to feel again.  She handled it really well and was much more awake and alert for longer periods of time. She has had absolutely no pain in her back, but her hip and pelvis have given her a lot of trouble.  At about 5 p.m. last night, an ambulance picked us up from Primary Children's and delivered us to Shriners.  Our transition once we got here was a little bit crazy but after a few hours we were able to settle her in pretty well.  Her prescriptions didn't transfer over because of some complications, (both hospitals showing her being a patient) so she was 2 hours overdue by the time she got her Lortab.   We discovered a new drug that really makes her happy, Ativan, and have used it a few times in the last couple of days to relieve some of the pain.  But Valium is most commonly used for the muscle spasms that she's experiencing, but she has huge emotional and mental reactions to that that aren't pretty.  We thought we'd give a teeny tiny dose of Valium one more try last night as she was having some pretty intense pain.  She reacted just as she always had, and from 9 p.m. until about 12:30 a.m. had a pretty rough ride last night.  Tonight she had the same level of pain, but we stuck with the Ativan, and she is sleeping peacefully right now.

Today has gone fast, which is good.  This morning as Keith was putting Shawnie into a wheelchair (still part of therapy...) she was bossing him about every little wrinkle in the pillow behind her head.  He pulled an imaginary pea out from behind her pillow and said, "Here princess, I found a pea."  The whole day has been like this.  Lots of rolling, smoothing blankets, positioning legs and head and hips to the precise centimeter.  The physical therapist was in late this afternoon and mentioned that for all the spine fusions, day 4 is the "Princess and the Pea" day.  We got a good laugh out of the fact that we'd called it that from the beginning.  It was nice to know that she's right on schedule...

Lots of fun things today, Nana and Papa came to spend the day keeping us company, her FAVORITE Shriner's employee, Jillian, (a child life specialist) was in today and spoiled her rotten, bringing in things all day, including a ginormous stuffed elephant that is bigger than she is (I'm not even kidding) as well as some really cute slippers.  She also painted her fingernails red sparkle for Christmas.  Dr. Santora stopped in a couple of times today and said she is right on schedule for healing, maybe even ahead.   We had the most fabulous awesome helpful nurse in the world, and Carole came over from Primary's to shower her with more gifts and sat with her while I went down to get her dinner. She was even able to spend a tiny bit of time texting some friends from our room that is not supposed to have internet that has internet.  Tonight she made a purple sparkly stocking with some cute volunteers and then she watched Evan Almighty for the first time.  She thought it was so funny, even though she dozed through a lot of it...  I can't imagine why she dozed, it was a pretty low-key day. :)  I realized at about 6 p.m. that she never even took a nap this afternoon, so I've decided that tomorrow really had better slow down a bit.  She was So Tired by bedtime tonight.

Tomorrow they are planning to take the bandage off of her back. Thursday she (finally) gets fitted for her new popstar pink with recline and high speed and power elevator wheelchair, and (crossing our fingers) we can be home by Friday.  She just has to be able to sit for the 2 hour drive and she is definitely not there yet.