Family Forever

Chapter 4

Family Forever - Chapter 4

"Do you want to watch a movie?" the PICU nurse asked Sophie before they started cleaning her up the next day. The nurse had years of experience in distracting patients while they were having painful procedures done and one of those was watching a movie.

"Yea, I want to watch Madeline," Sophie said confidently. "I don't know if we have that one but let me go get the movies," the nurse said as the retreated from the room to get the movies. "Unfortunately, we don't have that movie, but we have lots of other ones."

"Soph, they have Camp Rock with Kevin, Joe, and Nick in it, do you want to watch that one?" Dani asked once the nurse had left to go get warm soapy water.

"No, I want to watch Madeline," Sophie complained.

"Come on, let's watch Camp Rock and we can see if we can find Madeline for you later, how does that sound?" Dani asked Sophie as she nodded and then turned pale green and vomited. "Oh honey," Dani said as she grabbed the bucket and held it under her mouth for her to vomit some more.

Doctor Ackman came in and did rounds at his lunch break. "We want to get her out of bed once you are done cleaning her up," he told the nurse and Dani, who was assisting in cleaning Sophie up.

Once they were done cleaning her up, they put Sophie on this yellow plastic sheet, it reminded Dani of a slip and slide. They slid her over into a reclining wheelchair, another painful experience for Sophie. Sophie slept for a good hour after they moved her into the wheelchair. While she slept Dani organized the PICU room, even though she was sure they would be getting out of that room today and going down to the regular unit.

When Sophie woke up, they moved her back into bed, yet another painful procedure but it was done and over really quickly. Then they took her down to the regular unit. The loud rackety hospital bed and the tiles that were on the floor going into the main unit were enough to keep Sophie awake and in pain. As soon as Sophie got back to her room she crashed and fell asleep for two and a half hours.

Two hours later Kevin, Joe, Nick, Big Rob, and Frankie were in the room with Sophie. They had all encouraged Dani to go down and have dinner with Kevin's parents. At first Dani didn't want to be that far away from Sophie in case she needed her. Kevin finally encouraged her to go. Kevin and his brothers were there with her and incase Sophie would wake up all of them would be there to help her with whatever she needed. Kevin went ahead and took this opportunity to update Sophie's Caring Bridge page.

Good afternoon: We have had a long and busy last evening and day so far. Sophie just left ICU and is now resting in her regular room. Last night she dozed and woke about every hour - her legs are not in a cast, but she has a huge triangle foam piece between her legs - this seems to be comfortable at times and annoying at other times! Sophie's blood pressure is low and to help with this at 10:00 a.m. today she had her second unit of blood. Her heart rate continues to be high - mostly based on the pain, which is more than we anticipated. Besides bone pain there is muscle and tendon pain, and Sophie cannot fully feel her right leg - a concern for us but the Doctors say it is "just nerves". This afternoon she sat up in a chair for two hours (this is good) and got rid of one of her three IV's (yeah)! This has been a tough day. On Thursday we hope she can spend some time in her wheelchair and get a chance to move around a little bit - we will have to see how she tolerates the pain. Sophie is amazing to get through all of this, but we have a long road yet to travel. Thank you so much for your support!

Kevin and Dani

After a half, an hour of encouraging Dani to go to dinner with Paul and Denise she finally did. They picked a corner table in the cafeteria hopefully somewhat away from prying eyes. "How are you holding up," Denise asked.