Great plans...

Rob's doctor anticipates that he will be at a PEEP level of 5 by Friday morning. When that is reached, he wants to start doing trials off the vent for periods of time. He plans to have Rob start those trials either Friday or Saturday. When I left tonight, he was at a PEEP level of 7 and they planned to drop him down again soon. His doctor said that once he gets going on the trials, he needs to go for a full 24 hours off the ventilator before they remove the trache. He had a huge day of progress today. His doctor said that with this progress, Rob will more than likely skip the move to the Intermediate Pulmonary Care Unit and be able to move right to the nursing floor. That was so good to hear. So I hope that he is going to have an eventful weekend. I'm praying for a move to the floor by Monday. His doctor seems to think that is a realistic goal as long as he continue progressing so well. So I'm sticking with that.

It's very hard for Rob to realize how far he has come since he doesn't really know yet how sick he was. He still doesn't know how long he's been hospitalized or how serious his condition was. And I plan on leaving it that way for a while. At least until he's ready to hear that news. Right now, he just needs to focus on getting better, not on how bad he was.

This afternoon Rob motioned for his doctor to come into his room as he was passing by. Rob took the pen and paper out of the doctor's hand and wrote rather clearly "home tomorrow". While the doctor didn't think that was possible, obviously, he went right into explaining to Rob what the plan was for getting him to that stage. Rob seemed ok with that but I'm sure he would have rather been told that yes, he could go home tomorrow. I would have rather heard that too. :)

He has lost about 30 pounds of fluid weight that he had retained from fluids he took in and fluids that his body produced when it was in distress. His doctor expects him to lose another 20 pounds of fluid that he is still retaining. That gives a good picture of the amount of fluid that Rob was retaining.

So today was a great day for Rob (and me) and I'm very encouraged by this progress. It leaves me thinking of the big steps to come that Rob will make.

Kelly