April 19, 2024

We’re happy to report David’s nurse who has taken care of him the most was back today. David needs to start giving her some smiles because she has been instrumental in getting him to his current state. He’s come so far and everyone is amazed at how he’s doing now. 

David was so excited when he woke up today, because that meant he was going to listen to Taylor’s new album. Boy, was he ever surprised when he found out it was a double album. He and his dietician are going to put together a powerpoint to present to the group on the new album, and his provider stopped in at the end of the day to get his opinion on it. He probably listened to it twice, I think. 

His friends from general surgery stopped by and gave their blessing to allow him to start his feeds again. So, today he’s getting fed his milk at 3 ml per hour through his NJ tube. So far it has been going well for him. 

David’s other big change for the day is that he’s going to be on high flow oxygen support all day and all night (unless he tires, and then they’ll put him back on CPAP). Just last weekend he was on SCUBA and now he’s going to be doing high flow. He’s really progressing fast. If he continues to do well, they will probably remove the ventilator from his room tomorrow (they tried to do it today, but I asked them to leave it since this will be David’s first try of high-flow overnight). 

David’s fluid was down again, so his BUN went up even higher. Hopefully now that he’ll be getting more TPN and a small amount of feeds it will start to come down tomorrow. 

Fern and her mom stopped by briefly to just check in and let us know Fern was heading to the studio for Bark Buddies. Today’s episode was all about Fern and celebrating her 2 year work anniversary, and was going to include some Fern trivia. Of course we couldn’t miss that, so David tuned in and surprisingly won! After getting the first question wrong, he was able to figure out all the others. Fern’s mom also printed us some more photos which we used to decorate David’s door – we received some new photos of all the kids with Fern and then a couple of David, and a couple to update David’s photo book with pictures of his family. 

David was able to get cuddles by both mom and dad today. He also got down on the floor to play with OT. Well, David said tortured by OT, but he’s working on his tummy time. He still prefers to faceplant rather than lift his head, but lifting your head is hard work.  

David also got many compliments on his president shirt today. I lost count of all the people that said they’d vote for him. 

His nurse also asked about whether anyone had brought up a helmet for David yet? The back of his head is definitely from laying on his back as long as he did. This is the second time a nurse had asked about it, and I made the assumption that it would be something that would be addressed once we are off the unit or once he had better head control. It turns out, they like to start helmets in the ICU, so we’ll inquire about that tomorrow.