Normalizing.

Greetings! Guest blogger Rus here, with a brief word about the monitor Stephanie’s hooked up to. It prints a continuous strip on thermal roll, and the paper reams last about eight hours. When it runs out, a loud, LOUD alarm goes off... it seriously makes you think you’re about to die, even if you’re not the one hooked up. It’s just about the worst design choice humanity has come up with since EVER. The Edsel had it all over this bastard.

We spent the 4th of July weekend at Kaiser, which sorta is in keeping with our history of spending national holidays in hospitals (well, just the once, when Stephanie went down on her motorcycle on New Year’s), and since we’re stuck in here, and we're going to be stuck in here, I’ve been slowing trying to normalize things a bit for Stephanie. We’ve been going on the wireless monitors for periods of time, which let Stephanie do some walking up and down the hall in her terrible off-pink hospital smocks... that’s not a typo, either. She wore two. One to cover her front, one to cover her back, because one alone was not designed to do both. Another poor design at work.

Next, she started getting visitors, and they started bringing gifts. Cris brought pork buns and red velvet cake (Steph’s favorite), Paula and Sean brought Transmetropolitan and Y: The Last Man and Marvel Zombies Vs. The Army of Darkness (which is a really bad title; it’s actually vs. Ash, from Army of Darkness), everybody brought more books, but more importantly, they brought in good and silly conversation, and we all laughed a hell of a lot. Their visit was the first thing to really perk Stephanie up, and more people have said they’re going to come by. We’ve been fielding calls all Monday, and I’m all for it.

Showers have become a daily occurrence; it’s the only time she gets to take her monitor-holding belly strap off, though her IV stays in place. Her first IV got in the way of her using her knitting needles, but IVs have to be changed out every 72 hours and the new one was placed in the other hand, in a better location, so now she can knit again. Wyatt’s blanket has grown noticeably in just a few hours.

We’ve also gotten her back into normal clothes, and being in a tank top and sweats for the first time in days must’ve made her feel so much better, because it was the first time since the NST that I saw her moving like her normal self... not tentatively, like she was expecting to break with every step. I've also been bringing in DVDs (Arrested Development is getting a lot of play), renting one (In Bruges, which is the opposite of being the comedy it's advertised as), and yesterday I bought a WiFi card so now we have slow internet in the room. Big improvement, that.

And Wyatt’s been active as all hell. He’s had “decelerations” from his “baseline” of 150, but not below 120 for more than a few minutes... not the double-digit numbers we saw on Thursday. Otherwise, he’s been galloping along like mad.

Well done, boy.