Trach is in

Just spoke with my mom. The trach is in successfully & they also took the opportunity to manually clear out some more of the fluid in his lungs. He was sedated for these procedures & so they don't expect much response out of him the remainder of the day. In spite of that, my mom said he did open his eyes for a little while!

Don't know if any of you saw previous comments from our good friend, a liver transplant coordinator & former ICU nurse, but she really helps us lay-folk understand the benefits of this procedure. It moves Brian closer to being able to communicate & off of so many sedatives since the tube he'd want to rip out of his throat (& did when he was in the hospital for life-threatening epiglottitis at the age of 3, really) has been taken out for him. It also helps build back up the lung muscles to help him breathe on his own, something a ventilator didn't. It also makes him able to move a bit more since with time he'll spend less time hooked up to a machine.

The CT scan was not until late this afternoon so my parents are still awaiting the results on that but all in all he's hanging in there well.

We're almost ready for Keeter Christmas...though my parents have like seven or eight live trees in & around their house (really), Brian's holding steady with two (assuming no one removed the beautiful white one he got early last week, yes that was a threat) in his room. He's also got a snowman & a great gift of a digital picture frame playing 1,000s of pictures of his most adorable (& only, at least for now, we'll know if he's got another or a 1st niece on the way in early January) nephew.

Just wait till that kid wakes up. I hope TNT has their A Christmas Story marathon running on Thursday. That, with some horribly out of tune Christmas carols from his sister, Myra, ought to make the holidays complete. I can see those eyebrows now... ;)