Day One of Recovery...always the worst

This morning was a rough day but ended on a better note.

I should start off saying that Tiff is ok but we are staying one more night in the hospital. The reason they are keeping her longer is because her Oxygen count has been low, but by the end of today we found out why.
Tiff called me this morning at 7am to get there asap so I did. It had been a rough night for her just with the pain and them coming in to check on her every two hours. A doctor came in shortly after I got there to talk to her about trying to get her Oxygen count up. We were wondering if the numbers they were getting where her normal but they didn't know that because they don't have her medical records, but they said the numbers where low for anybody. So they ran tests to see if it was her lungs or heart but they both came back normal. Then her surgeon came in and began saying that he thought the problem had something to with her medical past. That sent us both into a panic...it was our worst fear coming to life and we were thinking that we were going to have to come back to the states.

I went back to our hotel to email and try and get a hold of the Chesnuts. As I was contacting them a team of doctors came into see Tiff and they examined her and talked with each other in Greek...very scary for Tiffany laying there.

Then, Ruth and John Chesnut (who we followed down here because they were meeting and vacationing) came by, and just having familiar faces was such a relief. Ruth being an experienced nurse knew instantly what was going on and what we needed to do. She told us that the day after a surgery is ALWAYS the roughest and worst. Since she was under for three hours and went through so much of course her recovery was going to be rough. She explained that the reason her numbers where low is because of what her body/lungs go through during surgery. In surgery you take very short breathes and thus don't use your lower lungs. Thus when you come out of surgery you have to begin exercising that part of your lungs by standing up walking, taking deep breaths, and coughing. They kept telling us to take deep breaths but we never understood why until then. So she said to start doing it every two hours. They were just about to leave when three doctors came in. One of the doctors introduced himself as the director of ICU which we all got big eyed about because we thought they were going to move Tiff to ICU, but he said he was there because he had been looking over her stuff and after looking at that and her in person he said there is nothing seriously wrong with her. He said that what was wrong was what Ruth had just told us and it was common and she would be fine. He and the other doctor kind of apologized for all the tests by saying, "We get paid to worry. So we always start with the the most serious issue and work our way to the common reason by process of elimination."

That put us at ease but still we want her to get out of there asap. We hate that this is keeping us away from why we are here and don't want to spend our time here in the hospital. So we appreciate your prayers and need you to keep doing so. Pray that our spirits stay up and that Tiffany gets better soon so we might be released so we might get back sooner to WHY we are here.

Love you all