Month to the day - Luck of the Irish?

Here's a mid-afternoon update for the first day of our second month in the hospital. It was on the 17th of February that this whole saga began. The highlights for today so far.

Ben managed to gag hard enough to partially "throw up" his ng tube, and then he completed its extubation himself. Our favorite nurse Desty did her best by at least asking the question, "does he REALLY need this tube?" and then by getting permission to put the lighter weight, more flexible version of it in when they reiterated how important they think it is to continue to drain the stomach. But Ben enjoyed his few moments of freedom from the tube by sitting up in the chair, getting bathed, and talking like himself, and then helped Desty get the new tube in place.

The other issue has been his blood pressure, which has been consistently a bit higher than they would like. There are two ways they were measuring the pressure. One is the traditional cuff around his left arm which takes a reading every hour or so. The other was an arterial (art) line in his right arm. The art line was becoming unpredictable as to its accuracy, one minute incredibly high, the next very low, and so they finally just gave up on that one. No more art line!

Then Ben's luck of the Irish continued with a raffle held in the Brown Family Life Center. Apparently someone donated some Nintendo DS Lites. In order to be entered in the raffle, the patient child had to have parental permission. The nice folks in the center called me and asked for my permission to enter Ben's name, and he was one of the winners! Now, I wonder if he'll like playing with a DS?

Our other activity for the morning was a "cleanout" as Ben had about half a dozen bowel movements which are removing old blood left over from last week's huge bleeding episode. That movement is not pleasant, but it is a necessary and good thing.

Today and yesterday have been gorgeous Springlike days in Chicago. I have enjoyed getting out for a couple rather lengthy walks and deep breathing. Chicago is an absolutely beautiful city, especially on clear, sunny days, and the hospital's location in Lincoln Park is one of the nicer north Chicago neighborhoods. Come visit us. If you come at meal time we can enjoy a great Chicago eatery together, and a brief visit with Ben.