And So We Wait

Dalton and I aren't very good at plodding. We aren't patient. We don't like repetition. We require constant stimulation. Healing and recovery is plodding.

Before I get much further, I just want to ask those of you who are praying for Dalton to include a woman named Patty Horton in your prayers. Patty had surgery on the same day that Dalton did, and I've been talking with her family a bit in between visits. Patty is probably late fifties and just had her fourth brain surgery to remove a benign pituitary tumor. This one was the toughest and so far, she has not regained full consciousness. In fact, they had to restrain her because she kept pulling the iv's out of her arms. They keep doing CT scans to check the swelling in her brain, but so far, nothing has changed. Please pray that she would regain consciousness, that the swelling would stop, that her recovery would hasten, and that she would be healed of these tumors. Of course, please also pray for her mother, husband and three daughters.

In Dalton's case, there isn't much to report in the way of progress today. Thankfully, there also isn't too much to report in the way of regress. Dalton is more or less the same. Both yesterday and today, his temperature has returned to normal during the day and spiked at night. He generally feels pretty good, and would like to get out of ICU, but that won't happen until they are absolutely positive that the infection is gone. They'll be sure of that when the fever stays gone.

One thing of note is that yesterday morning, DeMeester was concerned that perhaps the new internal connection between what remained of the esophagus and Dalton's stomach could be the source of the infection, so they actually put a scope down Dalton's throat to take a peek at his new "foregut". Nice word, eh? The good news was that things looked great down there and the surgeon was very happy with the way it healing.

Unfortunately, when DeMeester came by this morning, he also noted that things were not healing so well on the outside. Both of Dalton's abdominal incisions were slighty red and swollen, so they are keeping a careful watch on them as well.

And so we wait for things to change. We wait for the fever to stay down. We wait for the right chest drain to slow down. We wait for the inision to heal. We wait for him to be able to eat. We wait.