Monday, November 30

Today was a bittersweet day.  Bill found out this morning that he won't walk again and it's been rough.  For those of you with stories about your coworker's uncle's college room mate who was given the same prognosis and then defied everyone and walked again: keep those stories coming.  The doctors are telling us that it is not possible and the scientist side of me understands that when a spinal cord is injured the way his was that it is not possible to walk, but the hopeful, optimistic, loves-a-good story part of me wants to think there is some little chance he will.  And when Bill has had a chance to process all of this and is a little farther along on his road to recovery, he may want to have some of that hope as well.

So, that was the bitter part of the day.  The rest of the day was fairly busy and he should sleep well tonight.  His doctor said he's come a long way on the ventilator and they spent most of the day turning the settings back.  I'm not sure what sort of timeline we are looking at in terms of getting him off the ventilator, but it looks to be just over the horizon.  Yay!  His heart did much better today and I don't think he had a any bradycardic episodes.  Double yay!  He had speech and swallow therapy this afternoon and was able to talk around the trach as well as swallow some thickened cranberry juice.  It went very well and he will have another session tomorrow.

I'm not sure how much longer he will be here in Morgantown.  I don't think he's medically stable yet, and in fact tonight he is having another round of CT scans to look at his GI tract.  However, he's made a lot of progress and it won't be too much longer before he doesn't need to be in the intensive care unit.  He will likely spend a day or two in a regular room and then go on to a rehabilitation facility.  I talked about rehab with him today and he wants to get into a program, work hard, and become as independent as possible.  I'm amazed by his strength and courage and know that he will get through this and blow us all away.  I can't wait to see it!