More Day 5

8:00pm

Andrew had a pretty busy day today starting with removal of the little tube measuring his intracranial pressure and the breathing tube.  He had a few visitors and so thanks for that.  Some really terrific goodies from several folks; and special thanks to the Kenyans for plying the ICU with unexpected treats...they really know that the way to nurses' hearts is through their bellies.  More great offers at every turn, and again thank you for this amazing support.

The community of people involved in the care of the trauma patient is amazing.  We had Daisy turn over care to Rodney, our Day 1 incredibly organized and efficient nurse, visits by the physician's assistant (to Dr. Moure), something that we don't have in Canada, someone to find a neck collar that fits Andrew's moose of a neck (he will have a collar for 6 weeks), speech therapist to check the ability to start swallowing (but Andrew was too sedated when she came so he will have to wait until the a.m.), the physical therapist who wants to launch things as soon as tomorrow, Tony the very capable respiratory therapist with the most amazing outlook on things, Karen, the wound care specialist for the county, and, of course, the ICU team of various residents...on and on it goes.  Andrew has always needed to try a little harder to get noticed considering that he is the third child...complete success this time around.

Andrew is pretty sleepy.  He can't sit up and have a conversation.  His speech is pretty difficult after having a tube through the vocal chords for four days.  He is still sedated with narcotics for pain, but that should decrease tomorrow.  He is pretty restless as expected at times and at others is a little more focused.  In fact, he grabbed a pen to write that he wanted his right "shoulder in a cast please" (he has a cracked scapula) and that "a cast would help".  As soon as we got him into a sling to support the shoulder he went straight to sleep and was happy.  He wrote a couple other notes requesting food and of all things fondue...did not specify what kind.  He got a hold of my iPhone and was able to get out of my music and scroll through things; unfortunately I didn't have much music to his liking.

As we continue down this road, and barring speed bumps, the next few days will involve mum and dad doing a lot of comforting, soft speaking to help reorient him and at times more brain activity focusing on the speech therapy, physical therapy and things like eating.  There won't be a lot of time for visitors we suspect, but in our free moments we go to the blog to read all of those terrific comments by you, the blog readers...you give us tremendous support to keep this process going.  Thank you for your thoughts, prayers and generosity.