No news is good news! Sorry for the LATE post. Chuck has kept me hopping all day. He's doing really well. He has been breathing without the ventilator all day. Tomorrow, his BIRTHDAY, will be very busy. This is the plan:
- His right chest tube will be removed. (This is the tube, under his rib cage/above his lung, which drains blood and other lovely fluids.)
- He will be taken off the ventilator.
- His trache tube will be capped.
- The speech therapist will determine Chuck's swallowing abilities. If all goes well, Chuck will be able to eat and drink.
- If Chuck can eat food, the nose tubes will be removed! (Unlikely Chuck will get cake on his birthday ... but perhaps a nice bowl of soup will do just as well!)
Future plans: Hopefully the left chest tube will be removed this weekend. On Monday, the extra skin on Chuck's back (yep, the skin expanders worked like a charm = toooo much skin) will be removed. This will allow Chuck's back to heal with little chance of infection. As it is now, that extra skin is dry and is slowly dying.
