Thank you, updates

Thank you to all my friends and family members who send love and support our way. It helps us more than I can say.

Today is hospital day 17 for Lively. We're out of the ICU, on the main hospital floor. On Monday, Lively had surgery to place his G-J tube, and at the same time the surgeons removed one of his chest tubes. Having the G-J is going as well as it could be at this point, I guess. He seems to be tolerating it well, his pain is under control, and it's awfully nice to see his face again without all the tape and the tube going into his nose. It has been terribly hard for me, though, to see the tube sticking out of his belly, and to feel like this may be a better thing for him than the one going into his nose.

After surgery, the docs ordered a chest x-ray in the recovery room, and unfortunately, it showed that Lively's pneumothorax had recurred. Basically, his lung was no longer fully expanded. Lively still had one chest tube in place, and so they hooked this one back to suction to try to help his lung completely inflate. This seemed to work, so this morning they turned off the suction and planned to remove the chest tube this evening if his subsequent chest x-ray looked like his lung was still fully inflated, indicating that it had healed from the initial injury.

Unfortunately, Lively's lung collapsed again slightly after the suction stopped. This means he has to be hooked up to suction again for 48 hours, then put to water seal for another 24-ish hours (meaning that the tube is in and the system is closed, but there's nothing sucking air or fluid out of the chest cavity to help keep his lung inflated). Then if all goes well, maybe we can lose chest tube #2. If his lung is still not fully expanded, we start the 3 or 4 day cycle again.

Lively's last hospitalization was 26 days. It's unbelievable to me that we may approach that again.

Tomorrow is Lively's first birthday, and I'm very sad to spend it in the hospital. Very, very sad. I'm very tired, and very grumpy. And at the same time, I remember all we've gone through, how sick he was, how scared I was that I might lose him or that he may be damaged in terrible, terrible, permanent ways. So I look at his smiling face, and I try very hard to be grateful that I can hold him and kiss him and tickle him and love his whole fat and happy self.