Orlena Has Woken Up!

Tuesday 28 August 2012

Two days ago our 3 year old granddaughter Orlena woke up in ICU at Princess Margaret Hospital in Perth, 20 days after her head injury fall. She is unable to talk and her darling eyes are showing fear and confusion, as if she is wondering what is happening, but the positive sign is that she is appearing to recognise close family members as we lean over to talk to her. The poor little darling has tremors of her limbs at times, and we are doing all we can to reassure her that she is going to be getting better. The doctors and nurses are very surprised that she has got to this stage, as they really didn't think she would survive this far.

Orlena has now been moved to a ward where they can start on her rehabilitation. She is making tiny steps in progress every day and she is definitely responding to close family being by her side, looking at us and tracking us with her eyes. Her limbs have movements which are making the neurospecialists say this is a good sign, as there are no spinal injuries, and she may be able to get mobile one day with lots of special physiotherapy.

This has been an unexpected outcome…..though we all realise our little golden girl is still seriously ill and her future is still very uncertain. It is good to see all the loving gentle care Orlena is getting from all sorts of specialist doctors and nurses, and she is looking up at them as if she knows they are helping her. This has been so reassuring for us to see. Her brain swelling has been going down and we have been told that the next week will be an important one to indicate Orlena's future progress.

What a brave little girl she is; she is certainly putting up a fight for her life, with a legion of angels around her.

On a kind of funny note: some of us have been reading Orlena her favourite stories to help calm her. Today I thought it would be nice to sing to her with her favourite book "The Twelve Days of Christmas", as she was wide awake and looking worried. The darling seemed to enjoy my singing storytelling and showing her the pictures of the growing list of things around "the partridge in a pear tree". Orlena was vocalising with me and looking happy. But suddenly nurses appeared by her bedside, along with Adrian and Dave, telling me to "Stop!" as my singing story was causing the monitors attached to Orlena to all go off. Poor little love was getting so excited by my rendition that her blood pressure and other things were in warning mode! Oops! Nana was seriously red-carded there!

The next thing that happened was that our gorgeous little patient had a good bowel movement, which the medicos wanted to happen anyway. Glad to hear I helped there! No need for laxatives when I get singing.
And I've been banned from singing by the patient's bedside! For the record, I got to "On the 8th Day of Christmas" before I had to stop.

When next Christmas comes I seriously want to be able to sing the whole 12 days to a little girl. Or she can tell me to stop straight away in her own voice.

Karaoke Nana Trish