Heidi is out of the ICU

This afternoon (Wednesday 6/27/07) Heidi was transfered from the ICU to the regular hospital. Most of the tubes that were dangling around her body were removed, but not all. She stilll have the chest tube coming out of her left side as a drainage tube; and she still have the catheter, epidural and other tubes and monitoring devices hook up her still.

Via the epidural, she's taking Dilaudid with her thumb self-click. The ICU nurse explain to me that Dilaudid is 10 times more powerful than morphine. She is also taking Thoradol; which was approved override by Dr. Kukreja because the other pain doctors would not approve more than one dose. I am told that Thoradol is like 100 times more powerfull than Ibuprofen.

Yesterday, Tuesday morning, the doctors were concern that they may have nick into the esophagus because Heidi's pee were not at the level that it should be. So they did some "live" xray for which she had to drink some bitter medicine and some bromide. The xray ruled out the possibility of cut on her esophagus because it was not leaking.

Heidi and I meet Dr. Jasleen Kukreja a couple of weeks ago for the pre-surgery meeting. My impression of her was that she really knows her trade like a good car mechanic knows the problem of a car by the sound even without opening the hood. She answered all our questions and not just the way she spoke with confidence but the way she answered it made me feel she really knows her stuff. On the way home that day, I even mention to Heidi that that doctor knows her stuff. Something about her not throwing in big words and instead use layman terms. And when she did use some not so common word, she immediately followed it up with an explaination. Or, she'd say "i am not explaining this well", and she explains it differently. She was not cocky.

I just google her name, and she is some "rising star" in her field.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/02/11/CMGDVNKA3H1.DTL

And for those who want to see the "puppy" (warning: do not click if you don't want to see blood)
click here (if you can't see the puppy, send me an email):
http://cache.pando.com/soapservices/Package/package.pando?id=8E7A810A82D89EB4DB9B67E08CB9D2D11416A796&key=12A9BD88D524A9FCF30B26B05525A73B4181785BF1F64BAAF121DC62C3971EF5&tt=S2W&embedId=1F087B7096DC1C7AF99E25401CF628A7

2nd blog for Heidi,
Lawrence