Just a short follow-up post this morning, because something rather major happened after the other post.

The new breathing treatments that he's getting are a combination of breathing in the medication alone and by breathing it in in puffs. The tech explained that when it is the "puff" mode, that's like being percussed, or pounded on his back the way they used to do. He hates this but Emily found a way to get him to endure it and do it right....bribe him with ice cream! She told him that if he did the treatment without complaining, he could have more ice cream for a snack in the evening. He behaved perfectly during the treatment and Em went right to his nurse and set it up.

Dr. Wright said that even though there wasn't much to clean out, unlike Carly saying there was a lot, they did send off lots of cultures. It said it was mostly white frothy stuff that could still be infection. But he was pleased with how he did.

Carly drew some more blood to see if the hematocrit level was staying up, but didn't have the results when we left.

Now for the major happening. After eating 3 cups of applesauce and 1 of ice cream, when they brought his dinner tray it was just a regular diet, no heart healthy, no diabetic, no supplements or cans for his tube feeding, just a regular plate of baked fish, an undercooked/overcooked baked potato, green beans, roll, and strawberry shortcake. And...this warrants all caps...HE ATE! He ate half of the fish, half of the potato, most of the green beans and was working on the shortcake when we left! This is the same man who wouldn't even eat 2 bites of his favorite food (except for ice cream) turkey the day before! So, even though Dr. Wright said he didn't really get a lot out, it was enough apparently, along with the extra blood, to really make him feel better. Of course he had had no nourishment during the day at all. So, maybe the trick is to just feed him once a day so that he gets hungry!

The GI issue hasn't been addressed yet, they were waiting for the bronch to be done, so maybe sometime this week-end we will see what happens. And, he's still on a pretty high setting of oxygen. It had been turned up to 14 for the procedure and they were slowly bringing it down. It was a 12 when we left. Hopefully they kept turning it down in the night. The high flow has affected his hearing since that's about all he hears, the whooshing of the oxygen into the cannula, so he turns the TV up to unbearable levels for normal people. And my chair was right under the TV. Then we have to yell at him to even talk. So maybe if his flow can be lowered more, his hearing will come back more and he'll be able to hear better.

This has gotten longer than I thought it would. I told him I'm coming later today than usual. I have to take a different route today. Usually I take the route that goes by St. Jude's Children's Hospital, but today is the St. Jude Marathon and they've had signs up saying to expect delays, so I'm taking the "old" bridge and coming around the south side of the city. It will be a different way and I'm not as familiar with it so I'm waiting until daylight to leave today. The little bit of extra time already feels good!

I'm not taking my laptop today but I'll update either tonight or tomorrow morning. All in all yesterday was a success and a good day!