Thursday, October 18, 2007

10:00 pm (DC time)

This morning, David's "wake up time" wasn't quite as eventful because he was still sedated from the Demerol which keeps him from shivering. He didn't respond to command, but he would open his eyes and we'd talk to him and try to comfort him. His eyes opened more today then they had the last few days. He moved his arms, legs, hands and feet all over the place, just not when asked. The doctors said he does have pneumonia, but they've been treating that with antibiotics already and they're not too worried about it. He did have a staph infection in his blood, but they already had him on antibiotics for it, and today a blood culture came back negative, meaning he no longer has this infection! The dr. said his white blood cell count had been really high this week, but today was much lower. This is a sign that his body is getting over the infections, although still having to fight off the pneumonia. His fever was also breaking today, so his Arctic Sun, the cooling wrap, didn't pump as cold of water through it today and stayed around 30 degrees Celsius. His shivers weren't as bad today! They put him on a new medicine to lower his blood pressure, that also lowers his heart rate. This seemed to really keep him relaxes today. He definitely seemed more peaceful and restful today. We didn't see too much activity today because he was probably so exhausted from working so hard the last few days, but his body overall is healing. The Red Cross came by today and gave him a "Wounded Warrior" back pack full of goodies and a portable CD player. They told us that we could go down to the Red Cross room and pick up whatever else David needed, so we picked up an electric shaver and some CD's. We got some CD's with nature sounds and let David listen to the ocean today!
Oh, and by the way, we asked the Dr. yesterday if David was technically considered in a coma, and he said that they rate comas on a scale of 3 to 15 (weird, I know!). 3 would be someone who is completely brain dead and a 15 would be like most people walking around. David came into DC as a 6 or 7, and he is now at a 10!!!
Thank you for your prayers for David's infection... God is listening and answering our prayers. Thanks for praying for my parents and our sanity! It is truly by God's grace that we are in as good of spirits as we are! We actually are able to laugh and joke a lot... and we're pretty darn funny...well, to each other at least! Pray for our husbands as they have been our heroes this week and fighting David's battle on the home front with our girls! They have been so encouraging to us and so supportive. Pray that God continues to bless their time with our babies (while still getting enough rest!).
God is Great! Keep praying for David's pneumonia and movement on his left side.
Love you all, The Huddleston Family