Thursday

Well, we've had another stable night. Dad seems to be recovering well from surgery. He's still sleeping, but they are trying to let him wake up. He's still on a ventilator, but they are trying to wean him off of that. They've got it set to allow him to breathe over the respirator if his body tries to do that and he's been taking 7 or 8 breaths a minute on his own. They'll still need to reduce the oxygen level and he'll need to breathe even more on his own before he can totally come off of the ventilator, but these are good signs so far.

They've resumed the tube feeding today. They waited until about noon to resume that as they were waiting on his gut to wake up and begin making the normal sounds. He's at half right now and they want to see if his body will tolerate the feedings. I'm sure he was hungry since they took him off the feedings for yesterday's surgery.

He has been running a slight temperature pretty consistently for the last day or so. The doctor came by this morning and said that he had a slight pneumonia beginning in the lungs, but they are treating that with antibiotics.

He hasn't been moving yet. As he wakes, we'll expect to see more movement. Before they took him into the medical coma, he was fairly active and had to be repositioned on the bed several times because he was moving so much. We'd sure like to see that start happening again. The nurses have told us that the medicines they were using to keep him sedated might take several days to completely wear off. He's been off of the sedatives for at least 36 hours now.

Our spirits are still high. We continue to trust that the Lord is working to heal dad. We are so thankful for the prayers and words of encouragement that have been sent our way. We continue to hear about similar injuries with great results. We have just been overwhelmed by the outpouring of love. Please continue to pray; we know that there's just no better thing to do.