Sunday Evening

Today was indeed a good day. When I left this evening he was completely off the dopamine and both the pain medicine and the sedative were greatly reduced. He was breathing comfortably and his eyelids were twitching as though he was dreaming. I hope his dreams are good.

He had the bronchiostomy tonight and his doctor said "he tolerated it well" and then she told us that he bit her during the procedure. I don't think she minded that at all to be honest with you. The really good news is that his pulse did not drop at all while they were doing the test. When he was bronched two days ago they had to stop and give him breaks because his pulse dropped to 60 beats/min (thats low for him right now) and then went down to 40 (frighteningly low) while they waited. Yikes! Tonight it did not go below 80. His body is better able to maintain his heart rate.  See, the small things feel like the biggest accomplishments! They were able to remove quite a bit of fluid from his lungs and his temperature came down during the day. It looks like the pneumonia is under control. I'm not sure how long it takes to clear up completely, but I suspect that because of his condition we will see more infections like this.

Our family from Massachusetts came in Friday and Saturday. It's been so great to have them here, and even better to share some of this. My cousin Bekah spent most of today with him and for that I am incredibly grateful.