hats off!

After the surgery on Saturday to put Dad's brain flap back in, they'd re-wrapped his head in gauze. But, today I walked in to see that they'd taken his turban-hat back off! Yay! I much prefer seeing Dad that way -- much more like himself, crazyhair and all!

I also heard that they're looking at tomorrow to transfer Dad up to the LCAT, which we think is great news. He's off the ventilator, his O2-saturation levels are fantastic, his heart rate and blood pressure are pretty normal, they should be able to get him back up to goal levels (68 ml/hr) for his feeding sometime tonight, and his temperature is actually a little below average! He's doing ok on the Lasix -- they're getting more liquid out of him, but his legs and now hands and maybe neck are quite swollen, sigh.

He's still flickering his eyelids, which we like to see, and starting to move his mouth+tongue more. A couple of times, I closed his mouth by pushing his chin up, then waited a few seconds and let go of his chin...and Dad would close his mouth on his own for us. We cheered and clapped for him, and were silly and sang him the "Chin Up" song from Charlotte's Web:

Chin up, chin up
Everybody loves a happy face
Wear it, share it
It’ll brighten up the darkest place
Twinkle, sparkle
Let a little sunshine in
You’ll be on the right side
Looking at the bright side
Up with your chinny chin chin!

On her way home from the hospital, Dawn said that Dad was less active while she and Brian were there, so it does seem to come and go. If he's not too twitchy while you're there, it may just be that he's not "warmed up" yet or "tired out" from maybe being active earlier. They also said there was some blood in his urine, which may be an effect of the Lasix?, but still, it'd be nice if his whole system would just go back to normal.