Wednesday, March 10th, 1:00p update

Last night (Tuesday), Linda had her second surgery on her abdominal cavity. The surgery lasted just under an hour and she remained stable throughout. This was the second of several surgeries intended to clean out her abdomen and check for any additional infection. According to the surgeon, Linda did very well during the surgery and, to his surprise, everything looked very clean. Her intestine, colon and bladder all seem to be healthy and without signs of infection.

They're planning her third surgery for tomorrow (Thursday) where they will continue the cleaning process and begin to close her nearly 14" long, vertical incision. They will do this by suturing closed a small section on each end, and will continue to do this over the next several surgeries until they are able to completely close it.

After she returned from her surgery last night, they began a second dialysis treatment. This time they initiated a continuous treatment that will have much less of an impact on Linda's system. This will act as her external kidney and clean and filter her blood from all toxins, allowing her own kidneys to rest and begin the healing process so they can again function on their own.

Linda remained stable throughout the night. Her coloring is improving each day. She has begun to occasionally move her mouth, very slightly, and has opened her eyes once or twice this morning as the nurses have attended to her many IV's and dressings. As you can imagine...this has been a very exciting thing for her family to witness!

While this has been very encouraging, and we all continue to talk to her and hope for her to wake up, we just learned this morning from Dr. Pearl (her attending physician) that he would rather her not until they have fully closed her incision. For obvious reasons, keeping her quiet and still until this can be accomplished is imperative.

Another positive sign this morning is they have taken her off of the medication they were giving her to keep her blood pressure at a safe level. She is able to do this on her own now. Great news!

They've scheduled Linda for an MRI scan on her brain tomorrow morning. They want to be able to rule out any possible complications from the high fever (107 degrees) she had on Sunday/Monday and make sure everything looks the way it should. We will update you on the outcome of that scan as soon as we receive the results.

On a happy note, Dr. Pearl asked that we get Linda a pair of high-top athletic shoes and tube socks for her to wear for eight hours each day. A possible result of laying in bed for an extended period of time is the contraction of your achilles tendon (a condition called "drop foot"). Wearing high-tops will help counteract that condition. Sooooo...we ran right out and got her the coolest looking pair of pink and white Nike's they had! They look great although Linda will probably pitch a fit when she wakes up and realizes she's been wearing those for all to see. :-)

She is receiving great care from the ICU team here at LDS Hospital and we are very grateful for the kind and respectful way everyone treats her. We are also very appreciative for everyone's love and support that you've shown Linda and her family. We can feel the positive effects from your faith and prayers and we know that Linda is responding because of this. Thank you.

More to follow...