A Saturday update

Today it appeared we were going to make some major progress, but it turned out that we didn't make the steps we thought we would.

Jerry had a long night last night- he didn't sleep at all (and I mean not even napping too much). He was extremely alert and responsive to everyone that was in the room visiting him. We brought one of the kids Alphabet game boards as he was really trying to communicate with everyone, and with the tube in, he wasn't able to. The board worked fairly well, and we are still working on a few other ideas to help him communicate with us.

His blood pressure was awesome all night, and the nurses actually took him off all the blood pressure medicine.. so he is now back to regulating his own BP. Hopefully, it will stay at a good level for the future.

He is now breathing on his own and the pressure support on the ventilator is at the lowest possible level they can use ... this is all great as it means that he is breathing virtually on his own. He is very aware of the tube and several times during the night he has tried to pull the tube out of his throat.

They have been pulling fluids off of him since yesterday and you can see the change in him. Yes, he is still puffy, but he is no where near the level of puff that he was last night. They are going to continue to pull fluids from him and they are fairly optimistic at how this process is going.

This morning, it looked like we would have a breakthrough, however, after the doctor's consulted- things stayed the same. Because his levels and such were so good this morning, Nurse Jamie (yeah! she's back!) let the docs know and said that she wanted to see if they would take the tube out and get him off the ventilator. The doctors took over an hour to consult and finally decided to keep him on the ventilator for another 24 hours. They will re-evaluate his status tomorrow again and see if things have improved. Their reasoning for not removing him off the machines is to keep pulling fluids off of him. They don't seem to see any issues with his breathing, blood pressure or other vitals that would prevent them from removing him from the machine.. it all seems to revolve around them pulling fluids off of him to get him better. So, we hope tomorrow will bring more fluids out of Jerry and enable the docs to remove him from the ventilator. I know that he will be extremely happy as will the rest of the family and the great nurses that have bonded with him.