According to the docs and nurses, Chris is doing great. Since he is
ventilated, he has not been able to talk--which has been quite
difficult for him as you can imagine--so he communicates by sign
language and writing. Within 2 hours after surgery he was "talking" by
writing on my hand. One of his post-surgical requests has been ice on
his knees so I have become ice-mom, filling my hNs with ice and
rubbing his knees. Be ause of the vent he Also cannot swallow
anything more than saliva so dry mouth is somewhat relieved with tiny
sponges on a stick dipped in ice water that he can suck on but only 2x
or so an hour. His hemoglobin was quite low so he received a blood
transfusion early this morning. Meanwhile all the monitors keep
working away, sometimes sounding out some musical sound alerting the
nursing staff that something is not quite right.

The nursing staff has been wonderful. Emily and Valerie.

Shortly, they are expecting to extubate--remove the vent-- him.

That is it for now. It has been 34 hours since we got the call.

--Dana
Sent from my iPhone