For now this post is going to be short and sweet. I think I'm taking my laptop to the hospital today. The internet here at home has been up and down all morning and yesterday was a big day.

The gist of it is....from 9:40 am until after I left last night at 6:30, Bill had been in a breathing trial and breathing on his own! The vent was used as a CPAP machine, keeping airflow, but the actually act of breathing was all Bill. He did so well. The only problems he had were when he couldn't cough hard enough to move the secretions, especially after they turned him. But, after getting a little suction, his numbers would bounce back. His blood pressure and heart rate were tolerating the trial quite well.

The plan was to place him on just oxygen until 9 last night to see how he did and then turn the vent back on, as a vent through the night so that he didn't get into any trouble. But, for some reason there was a snafu of some kind and it still hadn't been done when I left. I told him I trusted the nurses to make sure he didn't have any problems. I also told him there were to be no wild parties or dancing girls and he just smiled really big and shook his head, meaning of course there would be no parties with dancing girls, wink wink. For those of you who actually know Bill, this is a sign that he's coming back. He winked at everyone yesterday and tried to mouth some words. He told me "Morning" when we got there and he told Mary Rose "home", whether he meant he wanted to go home, or he wanted her to go home, we don't know. He also said OK and he was pointing at all the tubes, so today we're going to talk about what has happened.

That's the main event from yesterday. I'll do another post with all of the ins and outs of things later. For now I need to pack up and go. It's an hour later than I normally leave, but it's also Saturday so there should be less traffic, even though it's raining. I need to stop and get gas before hitting the highway and get my backpack repacked. So, until the next update...