Tim's day featured all this:
1. Waking up from a good night's sleep, despite the fact that the respiratory therapists have to mess with him every two hours, checking the vent, adding nebulizers, etc.
2. Getting off the vent ("weaning") from 10:00AM to 9:00PM. He's still connected to the machine during this process, but is getting only oxygen from it, and does all the work of breathing himself. His doc was especially glad to learn that Tim weaned even when asleep.
3. Being up in the chair for several hours--while weaning.
4. Continued improvement in his lungs as shown in the daily chest x-ray.
5. No fevers now for a couple days--at least until 3:00PM, when it was 101 again, but went back down afterward.
6. Dr. Infectious came in and said that all news was good: no signs of infection anywhere: nothing in the blood cultures, normal flora in the sputum culture, and normal white cell count. He will discontinue the antibiotics soon, in order to make sure there's no "rebound" (or appearance of a secondary infection that might have been camouflaged by the antibiotics).
7. Dr. Pulmonologist assured Tim that if he can reliably get through 12 hours off the vent, he can get through 24. (So he shouldn't worry about ending up dependent on the ventilator.)
8. And best of all: Andrew came through on his promise to shave Tim. The picture doesn't do justice to his lovely smooth cheeks. Bye-bye, Belushi. :^)
Breathin' and shavin'...life is good.
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