Day 38 - Friday Friday

Daniel recovered quickly yesterday from the surgery and is hanging out in his room.

Last night Daniel tasted his first bits of food - grilled salmon and nectar-thick apple juice. He was probably too tired to really eat much - only a couple of nibbles and he fell into a deep sleep. This was after wound care so he was wiped out and too sedated to focus on anything.

This morning he tried some chicken salad and more AJ alternating between the two. He drank all the apple juice and had about 1/4 of the chicken serving.

He has no movement restrictions even with the new grafts on his front torso. The OT worked his arms and neck to increase his flexibility. She felt he was in too much pain to continue. Their plan moving forward is to do the big stretching during wound care when he's almost completely knocked out. He will get his dressings on his chest removed on Sunday morning. Until then his wound care will be in his room on his bed.

We're about to get him up for a bit. If we can get him sitting up in a chair we will try to give him more food. Maybe he can even start to feed himself.
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Dan was obviously in pain today when we got him up. All we had him do was sit in his chair, no walking. He didn't want to go, but once he was standing he pivoted over to his chair. Once there he was sitting forward looking very uncomfortable. Judging by the way he was positioned I think both his legs and chest were hurting, but we just really don't know for sure. We propped up his legs and tried to get him to lean back in his chair. Dawn tried to feed him some more food, but he wasn't interested. In the end we got him to sit for about 25 minutes before he moved back to his bed.

Dan was starting to get uncomfortable. His speech therapist arrived and wanted to see how his swallowing was going. She's concerned that his graft is pulling his mouth open and will tighten even further without using some splints. The problem with a splint is that with his wounds and donor sites healing on his head there's no good way to attach a splint for now and hold it in place. While they were talking Daniel was becoming more uncomfortable. We alerted the nurse and she came with pain med reinforcements that helped lower Dan's pain level. He's resting calmly now and will probably be mellow until wound care.

Last night as we were parting ways a good friend declared that I was creating a legacy. I've been thinking about that a lot... I helps me keep pushing on; helping Daniel to get better.
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Another cosmic event occurred as I went out for a walk around the campus here. I walked over to a building I'd been in before, but never on the 4th floor where I discovered photos of all the graduating classes for nurses over the years. This school (CU) has an ever-growing nursing program and may be one of the largest now west of the Mississippi. To make a long story short. Here's the legacy of nursing here where I discovered on my walk the first graduating class of the university nursing program.

When I returned I asked Daniel's nurse for today where she went to school. Many nurses that work here at the hospital seem to have come from all over the country. Well this nurse graduated from CU. So that's my legacy story that I happened upon while pondering the word legacy today - it's as if it (meaning behind the word) came out and found me instead of the other way around - at least that's the way I see it. Cosmic!