supportive medical care

Agnes' medical team and I made some decisions today that we hope will enhance her chances for a full recovery. Agnes had a medical crisis that resulted in very major surgery to clean up after the infected gall bladder, and now she is very weak. It will be some time before her muscles are strong enough to breathe on her own, so we have made the decision to connect the ventilator directly to her trachea to make it easier to breathe and to allow her to remain on the ventilator until she is strong enough to comfortably breathe for herself. This will be a much more comfortable arrangement for her than to have the apparatus in her mouth and throat. She is not doing well on the tube feeding. She is also having a line inserted into her artery so that she can continue on total parental nutrition. You don't want too much information here, but that should also make her more comfortable. We hope these changes will make it possible for us to reduce the amount of sedation. She is otherwise stable, and when we see how she is doing with these changes, we can move Agnes to a setting that will allow rehabilitation while she is weaned off the ventilator. It will be a long recovery, but barring unforeseen circumstances, we still expect that to happen. Please folks, she needs all the prayers and good thoughts to keep comin' her way.