another weekend in hospital

morning to all. we have reached another weekend in the hospital and it is actually good that it gets quiet here now as during the week somebody knocks on our door every 5 minutes from social workers to physiotherapists to radiologists to priests to chaperones to charly the hospital dog ( a golden retriever, just darker than annuk, the kesselmann's dog. but cara was not really interested, she just wants to have her cat tipsy to cuddle with....but, we made progress yesterday. cara took her first walk around the ward ( with chest tube and oxygen bottle ), played uno with the physiotherapist after her exercise regime, watched madagaskar and et, sat up in a chair a couple of times during the day and....most importantly...we managed to get her to smile! she is on pain medicine so that she does move around and can get rid of fluids in her chest. she has one last chest tube in and one inactive iv for emergencies, but she is getting all her medicines orally now. she still has some oxygen via a nasal canule and her blood pressure and oxygen get monitored continously. yesterday, in addition to removing one chesttube which got closed up with steri strips she also had the heard monitor wires taken out that were stitched into her flesh. those wires ( 2x2 ) were about 10 centimeters long and were attached to the heart for monitoring purposes......... we had to keep a straight face for cara's sake, but that was not easy.
also, she had spare ribs last night, only 2 small ones, but at least something to help her regain her strength.
thanks to the diekmanns, finkeldeys, delochs, rumpfs, hegers, eggerts, hess, walz, heubachs, roggensacks, rainer graef, the boarding school kitchen staff ( cara says your food you cook for her is a thousand times better than the american hospital food....) and karin and her group of boys, the little comments made her chuckle, and she misses the group. beate, we got your sms and e-mail, great news! so we are starting another acitvity day for bobbies. best regards from stanford hospital ( they were the first hospital in the usa to to do a successful heart transplant in addition to a  successful heart and lung transplant ) and enjoy your weekend!!!!