January 4th

I had a busy day, my mom had a busy day - and my dad just slept...

He's stable, his vitals are fine and they removed the stomach 'vacuum' they had through his mouth, down his throat and into his stomach (so I'm sure that feels better) and they started, albeit very slowly, to provide him with nourishment again through his feeding tube - which he is tolerating. The incision in his stomach looks good and is healing nicely. The doctors are using a wound vac which will eventually close on its own - and I would recommend googling this one - it's fascinating!

He did have a fever this afternoon, 100.6 but it's down now, 98.4 and the nurse sent in cultures from his blood, urine and mucus from his trach. These cultures take 24 hours for preliminary results and 48 for conclusive. Hopefully, they don't grow and his fever proves to be insignificant.

Now, we're just waiting for him to 'wake up'. He's been off of sedation for a while now, maybe 2 days, so we look forward to him squeezing my mom's hand, or opening his eyes and making eye contact with her.

Prior to all these challenges with the trach and the feeding tube, back when he only had a TBI - he was very slow to 'wake up' (it took maybe 10 days after the accident) but when he did -we were feeling very positive. He remembered he smoked, he remembered how to smoke and he remembered to go outside to smoke. Of course, he didn't smoke, but he wanted to - played charades and motioned to my mom 'hey, let's go outside to smoke...' Today I'm holding on to that information, the belief that he's in there, just not ready to come out - just like before.