April 14, 10:30 pm, ICU Room #7

His eyes are clouded over, an almost opaque white, like someone who needs corneal transplants. They say it is a side effect of the morphine. I thought he was blind but he nods his head when I ask if he can see me. It was very frightening at first, and really scared mother, but she was reassured when he nodded that he can see her. He cannot speak yet, we are told a therapist will teach him how to speak around the trache. It will not be normal speech, more like a whisper, but it will be more than the communication we have now. We have three signals: he can nod yes, shake his head no, and he raises his right shoulder in a sort of a shrug when he has a question. Then we guess as to what the question is till we get a nod instead of a shake of the head.

It is wonderful to see him without all the tubes in his mouth, and it has got to be a relief for him. The tubes had worn sores on the sides and edges of his mouth, and his lips are swollen from the irritation. I can only imagine what his throat must feel like. He's been moved from Room 9 to Room 7... and I choose to take that as a sign of improvement. Room 9 was an alcove almost in the nurses station with a nurse at his side literally every single second. Now he is in a room with an actual door, even though it is always open and the room is directly in front of the nurses station. And now the nurse will leave him for as much as three or four minutes at a time! This means to me he does not require absolute moment-to-moment care; or at least that's how I choose to look at it.

Today a doctor surgically inserted a port in his side, to insert the feeding tube directly into his stomach. He is still woozy from the anesthetic for that procedure. They had tried to put the feeding tube down his nose so they would not have to make another incision in his battle-scarred body, but it did not work; it kept clogging up. With a direct port to his stomach they can use a larger tube and it shouldn't clog.

His feet are looking better; only the toes are still black. They must be incredibly painful. His body seems to have sealed off the dead tissue - the top half of all but two toes - and it is wrinkling up and will soon be sloughed off.

Dialysis today helped remove the swollen look of his legs, neck and face... only his hands and arms seemed swollen afterward.

His blood pressure is good, holding its own with no medication to assist. Body temperature is completely normal - no more fever! Oxygen saturation is at 98% (can't get too much better than that), and he is taking an average of 20 breaths per minute with only 10 of them assisted by the machine. And early this evening, with a series of shrugs, nods, and shakes, HE dictated to the nurse how high he wanted his bed elevated. When it was finally high enough to win his approval and he was comfortable, he nodded his head. We felt like a great victory had been won. He'd been lucid enough to "tell" us that he was uncomfortable, and stayed awake long enough to resolve it.

He still has a myriad of obstacles to overcome, but it appears he is still in there, clinging on and fighting with all he can to win. Where there is life, there is hope.