little peeks

Isaac has slowly started peeking his eyes and waking up.  It is nice to see his eyes, even if just for a little bit.

Yesterday he was still very swollen all over and puffy, but when we arrived today some of that swelling has gone done and he is slowly looking more like himself.  Thursday they took him off the drug  that was keeping his whole body paralyzed.  They don't want him to move much because of everything healing.  He is still intubated which means that he is still on the ventilator which is controlling his breathing.  (That is the tube that you see in his mouth in the picture below).  The tube in his nose is draining fluids from his stomach.  Yesterday (Friday), they slowly weaned him off some of the sedative drugs and we got to see some peeks of his little eyes.

He also had a visitor yesterday, his big brother!

Gabe did really well seeing Isaac.  We prepped him for what he would see.  Gabe seemed a little intimidated by all of the machines, but was fine with them once he knew what they did.   Gabe was also concerned and asked, "whats that thing on Isaac's belly?" (Isaac's big scar)  He was really quite sweet with Isaac and even wanted to hold his hand.  It was a very touching experience to see his tender love for his brother.  I think it was good for both of them.

When we got to the hospital today Isaac was more awake than yesterday and he also seemed to be in more pain. His eyes woke up more and he was definitely aware when Dan and I talked to him.  I could tell he was grimacing in pain.  Luckily, they have good medicines that can help ease some pain.  Once he is off of the ventilator, we will probably have a PCA pump which is a medicine pump that we can push when we see that he is in pain.  We were told by the pain doctors before surgery that this specific surgery is probably the most painful surgery that they do at this hospital.  I believe this is because of the cutting on his bones and all of the manipulation of many abdominal organs.  It was certainly hard to hear that, but also good to know in advance so that we could prepare ourselves.

This morning we read him some books and he looked at the pages and seemed aware.  He also watched a little bit of TV.

He is sleeping now.  His urologist stopped in recently.  Our plan for today is to see how Isaac is doing with trying to breath on his own and hopeful take him off the ventilator.  The doctors have been very slow with taking him off because he needs to be still and flat.  We are ok with taking things slowly, as we just want the best possible and most comfortable healing for him.

On a side note, here is a picture of Isaac from last Saturday in his Buckeye shirt as we watched football.  He actually really liked wearing the hat!