Sunday, April 6th – Dallas had some visitors

We’re happy to report that Dallas had her nasal cannula of O2 removed overnight, and has maintained upper 90’s in her O2 sat readings since. Although she had some light coughing most of the night, she did have a few good productive coughs today and got some mucus out. Otherwise, heart rate has remained stable and vitals looking good and steady. Today’s nurse, Logan, asked her to squeeze her finger and did 🙂

The attending neuro docs stopped by to discuss the EEG readings that were placed yesterday afternoon. They did not see a classical sleep architecture yet – one that shows that Dallas fully goes into a deep sleep mode – but she is getting into some of a sleep cycle. With that, we want to make sure we continue normal interaction/stimulation during the day, and allow for a good resting period of 12+ hours overnight.

Her brain shows to be in slower resting state most of the time, which is what you’d expect to see during a recovery such as hers. There were no signs of unusual or seizure activity and both sides of brain activity appear symmetrical and of normal activity – a good thing! While still connected to EEG, the neuro docs did a bit of interacting/stimulating Dallas and saw the activity on the EEG machine appeared normal in response to doing so. One of the docs expressed that she feels confident Dallas will “wake”, it’s just a matter of time and she’ll do it at her pace. An order was entered to stop EEG and remove leads, which occurred later in the day.

We had a nice visit from Uncle Troy and Aunts Kathy and Kim today. Dallas seemed to really be engaged with their interactions and showed off her beautiful eyes far more than the little bit we saw yesterday or even this morning prior to their visit. She would look up and down to answer “yes” when asked different questions and a little blinking and eye movement as they played and laughed with her. She seemed to really light up when she saw “Snuggle Monk”, one of her fav stuffies!

Kathy helped Heather to remove a bit of the glue mess left behind from the EEG leads, and we’ll work on the rest tomorrow.

After everyone left, we told Dallas we were going to let her have a little down/quiet time, as it was a lot of excitement and stimulation for her to have company. We asked her if she wanted a light blanket and she told us yes with her eyes. We’re over the moon not only to see some positive neurological responses, but to actually be able to communicate with her just makes our hearts smile big 😊

She’s down for the night, and we are hoping for a good night of rest so that her body can focus on healing.

“Rivers know this: there is no hurry. We shall get there some day.” — A.A. Milne (via Winnie the Pooh)

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