Somebody Pinch Me - - -

Wow, am I dreaming or what? It must be the pain medication and the epidural or a combination of both.  Will somebody pinch me? I must be dreaming. I'm in and out of it all day...and guess what, just found out I'm not updating my own blog, my dad is. He's trying to help me keep up with what's going on, but I'm so worn out from my walking I'm not seeing straight.

I'm acutally feeling pretty good. You won't believe this but my oxygen sat's have been around 99% - 100% all day on just 2 liters of oxygen and my respiration is around 15 - 20 per minute. Man, I haven't seen numbers like this in years. It feels SO GOOD to breathe.

Oh, something else happened today...I had something in my throat and I actually had a hard time coughing...doesn't that sound funny? Imagine, me having a hard time coughing?  Well, I think it has something to do with the epideral and the fact that my chest was recently cut and pried open to remove the old lungs and install the new lungs. It sure was a challenge, but I finally coughed that little annoying "whatever it was" out of my throat.  Whew! I'm tired again.

It's 4:00pm and I'm getting very restless...I think I'm going to go for a walk.  Hey dad, would you go find out if I can take a walk down the hallways?  It's OK...I have clearance from the keepers of the OU to take off.  Hey, will somebody help me with all these monitor cables, tubes, IV poles, and oxygen tank?  OK, we're all disconnected from the monitors and I have my chest tube containers termporarily mounted on my IV pole and we are MOBILE. Let's go!  Hey, guess what, I can push my own IV pole and I'm moving down the hallway.  Let's see where this leads...another hallway, let's go right and see where this goes...wow, another hallyway, this hospital is huge....OK, going down this one and we're back were we started. 

Overall I just walked another 1000 feet and I feel pretty good, think I'll go for another round.  I think I remember where I was, let's go over the same pattern and then it should be time to eat back in my "Open Air" room with 12 other patients. Well, there you have it, another 1000 foot walk, put me down for 3 long walks today.  Whew!  I'm pooped out and can barely keep my eyes open, but think I will call Brayden and see what he's been up to all day. I could barely talk, I was so tired, think I'll take a mini-nap until my tray arrives.

It's dinner time and I'm going to eat everything on my plate...except the broccoli, yuch! 

What's that? Oh, my nurse is going to give me my benedryl before my meds, guess I'm going to take another nap and will hopefully sleep through most of the night while they run my anti-rejection medications. I must be dreaming...can't believe I have such good lungs and can readily breathe again.  It feels so good to breathe without coughing...good night!