I think I actually got a little bit of sleep last night. It's so hard trying to find a comfortable position and it just hurts to move at all if it involves my stomach muscles. I forgot to mention in my last post that when I am laying in bed they have these things that I wear on my calves that blow up like a balloon every 30 seconds or so. It alternates and blows up one leg at a time. It is supposed to help keep the blood flowing through my legs and hopefully prevent any blood clots from forming.

I took a little bit of nausea medicine last night and today. I haven't felt really nauseous, I just want to prevent it from getting any worse. My swelling has gone down some today and I can actually open my eyes all the way. The nurse took some tape off of my left wrist last night from where I had an I.V. or something during the surgery and it is all blue and bruised underneath. This morning the nurse heard me coughing some because of my cold and offered to attach a humidifier to my breathing tube so I could breathe a little easier.

I've been a little frustrated with some lack of communication that appears to be going on between the different people that are taking care of me. My main surgeon's assistant came in and took a look at me today and said that everything was looking really good and that since I was feeling fine I should be able to move up to solids today and have anything I wanted to eat. She also said that I should be able to have my catheter taken out because the epidural was up high enough that it shouldn't be interfering with my bladder function. Less than an hour later I had lunch brought into me and it said on the food order on the tray that it was a clear liquid only diet again! I was not too happy when I saw that and I mentioned to the person that brought it in that I had just been told that I could move up to a solid food diet. She said she would check with my nurse and then she came back and said that I could move up to a full liquid diet - which means some thicker solids like tomato or chowder soups and pudding. So a little bit better than what I was initially given, but still not terribly appetizing!

The surgeon's assistant also asked me when I was thinking I would like to go home and I said that it would be nice to be home for Christmas Day, but I also didn't want to rush anything and was okay staying there if I wasn't quite ready. She said that we would have to see and that it depended on a whole chain of events taking place. (Switch to oral pain meds, cap off the epidural, make sure the oral pain meds were enough, remove the epidural, remove the catheter, transition to solids, remove the IV from my neck.)

Around lunchtime my mom went over to watch MJ and Kay so DH could come spend a few hours with me. I feel like I'm not very exciting company at this point though because I'm still very tired and can't move around much at all.

I was able to get up several times today and I even made a lap around the whole floor once. There are some nice big windows at the end of the hallways and it was a nice view looking out of some of them (my room is on the 10th floor).

DH left before dinnertime so he could eat with the family and then bring the kids back to see me for the first time since my surgery. My sister also stopped by with her family and they brought me a cute little Christmas tree with some homemade popcorn garland and ornaments on it. Everyone that came in after that commented on my cute Christmas tree. That afternoon before my sister got there they decided to give me two more units of blood because my counts were still low.

After dinner my kids came to visit me! DH was holding MJ and at first she didn't see me, but once she did her face completely lit up! She started saying, "Mommy, Mommy!" I had decided to be seated on the couch when the kids came by instead of the bed so that they could sit next to me and hug me a little better. DH came over to me and set MJ down on the couch next to me and she was content to just sit there snuggled up by my side. Amazingly she didn't try crawling all over me and pulling or poking at everything I was hooked up to. Kay was also very excited and she was very interested in what everything was that I was hooked up to and what all of my owies were. Then once she was finished asking me questions she decided to explore around the room trying and get into everything that she shouldn't be doing. My parents came just right after my family and they enjoyed watching how happy MJ was just sitting there with me. The family wasn't able to stay too long because of MJ and Kay being pills, but it was good seeing them all and letting them see me so they could see that I was okay. It was also nice being able to talk to the older kids and ask them about their last few days of school. We discussed if the family would come by on Saturday and visit me and discussed possibly having M&M come over and spend a few hours with me by herself. We'll have to see if we can work something out so that can happen.