Day 2 at Stanford

This day started out at 7:00 AM with a wakeup call from Angela! She was wondering where her support team was and why we were NOT next to her! As we scrambled to get ready, Laurie talked her through why she was feeling so alone. She told Laurie that it was hard to feel secure without one of us with her.

The Doctors made their early morning rounds, and decided that the doses of Delanten, her pain medicine, was part of the cause she was so groggy & confused. They switched her to Morphine.

As we sat with her, it was obvious that she relaxed; even the nurses noticed a dramatic difference in our girl. We explained she was never alone when she did her 4 rounds of chemo and felt that made a difference in her ability to relax and fight the cancer. As the morning progressed her color came back, she did her breathing treatments and wanted to eat lots and lots of ice.

By 2:00 PM her physical therapists came by to get her up and out of bed, for 45 minutes she sat up in a chair. After she was back in bed the nurses had a surprise… they wheeled her into a private room. Yay!

Peaceful and quiet, she was now in a place where true healing could begin! The new room looks out over the garden entrance to Stanford hospital! We can actually watch the rain come and go, the trees blowing around and the lovely flowers in the garden. It is absolutely beautiful, (I will do my best to take some pictures.) Angela was so comfortable she promptly fell into a deep sleep for two hours. Even I (Josh) was inspired to take a catnap in an armchair. WOW what a difference a room makes.

Around 6:00 PM two doctors from Dr. Whyte’s team (Dr. Young and Dr. Chen) came to check in on Angela’s progress. They were so delighted to see how well she was doing, again sitting in a chair. I wanted them to go over the details of the surgery again so she could here from the experts how well it went. She listened so intently her mouth was wide open like she had never heard the details before (thanks to the pain medicine, she was so groggy that each time she hears news it’s like the 1st time). They said the chest tubes will come out tomorrow and are positive she will be released by the end of the week. :)

I must take this time to thank all of the doctors, nurses and staff here at Stanford! We truly feel as though Angela is being taken care of by extended family members. Everyone shows true kindness, care and the utmost professionalism. We feel like this unit is a well-oiled machine, all the parts working together to help for the common good. It’s not rare to see a different nurse coming in to assist in whatever needs to get done, or just to pop in and say “hi”. Awesome is a word we use to describe the level of care Angela has received from everyone! All the nurses take time to sit with us, share their experiences and more importantly value our input.

We have come to know everyone here and feel we are part of the Stanford family.

Love,
Stanford Support Team