day after

Brittany, NP came by in the morning and "deflated the cuff" of Jason's trach. AND...he is able to talk! His voice is stronger than before the trach, in my opinion. His second phrase was "it feels weird." In the few days we had to think about all of this, this was the #1 most scary thing that we were concerned about, and I will not dwell on the why....just to say that having a voice is so important. Most of the time, people don't even think about how important communication is until there is a chance that you may never have it again. Dr. Berkowitz says Jason is doing great. Several people, including a speech therapist, social worker, discharge planner, respiratory therapist....have come by today as well.

Rachel is taking care of us today, and she has been amazing with letting us relax and just explaining things. That is today's goal. She has addressed my needs and wants, Jason's needs and wants, and has not pushed the rules of the ICU too much. Jason is not "sick," so it is so awesome for the staff to acknowledge this. ICU has some guidelines that I know are important, but that doesn't make much sense to someone that can communicate their needs and is here by choice for a planned procedure.

Our at home respiratory set up will be done tomorrow. YAY for seeing Rob :) He will switch Jason over from their ventilator in the hospital to the Trilogy. We will still be using cough assist machine at home, and I'm pretty sure that it will do some suction type stuff as well for extra secretions. After this is done, Jason will do a swallow study to see what he can tolerate as far as eating. He gets plenty of nutrition now, but he may want ice cream or steak and baked potatoes, and we need to see what he can safely have.

My mama has made sure that I get a break and meals. While our neighbors have kept Jackson (THANKS Robbie and Debbie) the past few nights, my mom is planning on picking him up tonight, and going home at night so that he can be at home. Cameron (above, who actually married us!) came by during lunch today to visit.

Crosby, the therapy dog came by.

We made a pillow Buddha (or turkey or Jabba the Hutt) Our nurse said we'd love this pillow. It keeps it's shape and we think it will come in use at home.

But here, we are using for entertainment.

Ventilator sounds concerning BUT there is a number in this picture that I want to explain. To the right of the image of lungs AND at the bottom of the graph...The 15 are breaths Jason initiates. The 0 is the breaths that the machine "gives" Basically, the machine assists with moving air, it does not breath for him. Around 4:30 today, they adjusted the settings to be very similar to what Rob will put the Trilogy on tomorrow.