Day 5!

Quick Saturday update for you!

Stella got her third and final chest tube out this morning - it was totally uneventful and she wasn’t even drugged this time. The surgical fellow said she just “snuck it out”. I think Stella’s pain tolerance is about 90 times the rest of ours.

Her incision from surgery has been pretty nasty - I won’t get descriptive but it hasn’t been healing as nicely as our friends from CT surgery would like so instead of changing her dressing multiple times a day (and taping/untaping her sensitive skin around the wound) they brought in a pressure vac and sealed her entire incision with a special foam. The foam is taped to her chest, and then they poked a hole in it and hooked that up to a hose/vacuum which draws out fluid from the wound and increases blood flow to the area by decreasing air pressure on the wound. Medicine is so cool. It looks similar to how you would vacuum seal beef jerky so I’ve been joking that she’s going to taste mesquite flavored when it comes off.

We also did a little PT today! She walked down the hall (assisted) for the first time and did great. She will have physical and sternal precaustions for the next 6 weeks so we have to make sure she knows how to stand without pushing up with her arms - plus I had to re-learn how to pick her up and hold her without grabbing under her armpits. And she is a ways away from coming off oxygen completely. Just walking down the hall without any oxygen her O2 dropped to the mid 70’s. But she’ll get there!

That’s about it for today! She’s checking a lot of boxes daily. Her wound vac needs to stay hooked up for at least 48 hours so the plan the next 2 days is to rest and eat! There has literally never been a better weekend for the Masters. ⛳️

Stella took a wagon ride to get a chest x-ray!
My little beef jerky rocking her top knot and a smile, as always!