Visit to San Jose Hospital, Monterrey

We met with the Hospital’s International patient co-ordinator and she speaks English very well, so it made our visit easy. We took a peek at the ICU and a recovery room similar to the one Emma will be in when she is discharged from the ICU. The ICU is just like any one we have seen, with lots of people hooked up to heaps of machines. The recovery room is really nice and quite spacious and has its own bathroom and sofa so when Emma is up to moving around, she will appreciate her own bathroom and space.
Emma is scheduled to be admitted this coming Thursday morning 9am and all the paperwork is complete and ready for her arrival.
We had another visit from Dr Cantu at our hotel, he is very easy to understand and open about things. We discussed in more detail the procedure and what we should expect throughout the treatment. We know that Emma will have catheters in her arm veins for the ICU team to test her blood daily to ensure her kidneys & liver are working properly and she is has the right amount of oxygen in her blood. Other tests the team perform daily are x-rays to ensure Emma’s lungs are healthy. There are other tests also to observe changes in her RSD symptoms like temperature on different parts of her body (as she currently has quite a mixture of temperatures throughout), inflammation and colour of skin. Emma will of course have other tubes like the two through her mouth for breathing and feeding. The drugs used to anesthetise Emma will be through the IV line and will be slowly increased during the five days and this is to ensure she remains under general anaesthesia. After the 5 days, the quantity of ketamine is decreased slowly until Emma wakes up. They have found that it is much better for the patient to slowly come out of the ketamine coma, so it is likely that it may take Emma a couple of days and these days could be some of the toughest for us.
Dr Cantu has stressed to us, that it is important that Emma takes things very slowly after the treatment and that her rehabilitation needs to be slow and continuous; small steps each day.
Emma has been resting up heaps and eating really well. We are pleased with our hotel here and it has a free shuttle to the hospital which we will use lots in the following weeks. Our hotel is located across the road from a supermarket which has been really handy to get good food. Our hotel also has its own walkway across the highway (accessed only by hotel door key) to a good mall which has been fun to take a look around.

Tampa - Downtown Riverwalk

San Jose Hospital, Monterrey - from Cerro del Obispado (Bishop Hill)