March 4, 2024

I’m counting today as a success. They took David back to the operating room around 1 PM today, and by the time he returned around 3:30, his sternum had been reattached and most of his muscle and skin closed. This was more than his surgeon anticipated he would tolerate, which was wonderful news. There are a couple of centimeters left that have not been closed, but there is a dressing and a wound vac over it. The wound vac is good for a week, so the hope is that the rest can be closed next Monday. His surgeon did mention that it will be several more weeks though with David working on slow improvements before he’s ready to leave. I’m not sure if that meant leave the ICU or leave the hospital. Timelines really don’t matter much though, David will determine the timeline and it doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks. 

My favorite quote from today happened at rounds this morning. I don’t remember what exactly was being discussed, but they were deciding what to do about something, and they decided something was the best course of action because “well, he’s David.” Basically, what works for everyone else will not work for David and David gets special treatment because he likes to be unique. 

Now that the bone is closed and David is mostly closed up, his surgeon has said if he wants to wake up, we can let him wake up. Therefore, maybe we’ll start to see his personality more. When I arrived this morning, he was moving both his arms pretty well, and opening his eyes a little bit. That was the most I’ve seen out of him in a long time. I think he was starting to wake up a bit, because he seemed to respond to our voices as well. By the time I left, he was pretty sedated again – resting and warming up under his bear hugger. The bear hugger is a blanket that blows warm air on him, and I always want to crawl up into the bed and cuddle him with that thing on. 

While in the operating room, they switched out his bed to one with a scale. Since he was admitted to the general floor, the bed he’s been on doesn’t have a scale, and they really utilize the bed scale in the ICU since they can’t really move him around much. When David left for surgery on February 14th, he weighed 11 lbs, 3 oz (or 5.1 kg). Based on the weight on the bed scale, he now weighs….16 lbs 1.5 oz (7.3 kg). His nurse doesn’t think that is right, so they will attempt to weigh him again in the morning (considering, they have to try to hold up all the wires and tubes attached to him so they are not included in his weight, it’s a big ordeal). He does have quite a bit of fluid on him, but right now he would have moved him from the 1%-tile to the 63%-tile in weight. I guess we’ll see where he is in the morning. 

Those are the highlights for the day. Eli and Anna played on the playground after dinner before heading home, and I got to hang with David for a little bit while they did that. David’s feeds will resume sometime tonight, as he’s going to start aspirin in the morning and they don’t want to give that on an empty stomach. David will be on aspirin now for the rest of his life, which is very normal for those with his condition.