According to Plan

Yesterday (Sunday) was day #3 post-surgery.  Will experienced a lot of discomfort during the course of the day, and it seemed like a long wait every time he needed more Codeine.  He is not exactly happy, although he is absolutely not giving up.  They had to do another blood draw yesterday, and boy did he put up a fight!  As tough as it is to watch them pin him down (and even tougher to participate in), it is great to see how much strength he has when he needs it.  It's amazing that a 23 pound boy needs 4 people to pin him down to get a blood draw.

During the surgery, they had to sever some of his jaw muscles when they made their incisions.  Because of this, we were told that chewing will be very painful, and it will contribute to headaches.  So we have been taking it easy with feeding him and trying to choose softer foods from the hospital menu.  Yesterday his appetite finally showed up - he ate a full plate of Macaroni & Cheese and a Salisbury Steak.  He also drank more fluids yesterday than we have seen him drink since the surgery.  These are signs that he is traveling farther down the road to recovery.  His mood is sort of sad, he just sits and cuddles with us and looks at the TV or whatever else he feels like looking at.  We have gotten a few very faint grins but not the glowing smiles that we are used to.  Hopefully as his jaw heals the smiles will come back.

Will's brother Jack saw him (and us) last night for the first time since before surgery.  It was so great to see his big grin and to get a running hug from him, which neither of us will ever forget.  We spent a lot of time preparing Jack for surgery so he would be ready to see his brother afterwards and not be affected by it too badly.  He came into the room, looked Will over for about a minute, and went back to playing with his cousins down the hall.  It couldn't have gone better.

So, it must be very obvious to our visitors how tired we are, based on the multiple "Wow, you look tired" comments.  We have some awesome family members who got us a room at the Intercontinental Hotel which is connected to the hospital.  This has given us an opportunity to escape to the room and shower and get some uninterrupted sleep.  Dan went to the room last night and came back at about 6:30 this morning, and then Kelly went over to the room until about noon today.

The doctors are pleased with where he is in his recovery, as well as his level of function now that they removed a part of his brain.  There have been no setbacks or surprises, and none of the dreaded "S" word, as one of the nurses calls it.  So far everything is going according to plan, and hopefully will continue that way.  Now that we are rested and cleaned up we are trying our best to help get our little Buster out of here.  We think he'll really perk up if we could just get him home.