Finding His Voice

The days seem long and our goals for Blake and his path seem to change slightly with each rounding by the doctors. When I look through each blog post it feels like we have said his ventilator has been coming off all week. But it DID come out today!

The research tells Blake's team of doctors that if conduction in the heart does not come back on its own within 7 days there is a 99% chance it is not going to come back. Although there has been some promising signals his heart is just not doing any conduction. Tomorrow morning Blake will go back into the operating room and have a pace maker placed. We are still overwhelmed with how well he is doing as are each of the doctors and nurses. They will go into the same incision and place the pace maker under his ribs and he will be briefly placed back on the ventilator. If all goes well the ventilator should be removed immediately after surgery. We aren't looking at this as a set back but rather as another marker in the path towards Blake's ultimate recovery.

To be honest this morning was rough for Blake. He slowly woke up over night but this morning he (and his stomach) woke up with a bang. Because he was moving more, he was coughing more and the ventilator sits right at the gag reflex so he spent a large part of the morning getting sick which made him very uncomfortable. Although he is going back into the OR tomorrow they went ahead and removed the ventilator because it was causing him such discomfort. We were very thankful for that decision. Once the ventilator came out he was able to sit up and has been wide eyed. He has tried to say a few words but is still finding his voice again.

Right now he is resting comfortably with his favorite blanket from home and the giant teddy bear that his Daddy got for him. The rest of the day will be spent resting, recovering and preparing to go back into surgery tomorrow.