Day 4

Another good day with improvements! Collin’s fever, while not completely gone, is down and he’s closer to being back into his old routine.

Dr. Price and Jill (his Nurse Practitioner) showed up early this morning and again this evening to check in on Collin. They ordered some more aggressive antibiotics to address the fever and that appears to be working. His temp has come down to 99! Yeah! The only downside is that we will have to stay in the hospital until they run the full course of antibiotics (about a week). This is just a few days longer than we expected, so we’re not sweating it yet.

On a surprising note, Dr. Price told us that we can start moving Collin around. We’re a bit timid about moving him, but he assures us that he’s not going to break. It's still scary with such a big incision with hardware underneath. We’ll probably start out slow propping him up in his boppy pillow and see how he tolerates it. They will be by tomorrow to change his dressing and remove his chest tube that’s being used to drain the wound. That will make things a bit easier. Hopefully, by the end of the week we will be ready for the trip home and have all his new cares figured out.

Looks like all is on track for a good recovery. Collin is back to his original vent settings. Except for being stuck on his back or side, he shows signs that he feels much better (like flirting with the nurses). Pain seems to come and go, but only bad enough that he needed two shots of morphine all day.

It was a pretty boring post today, so I added a fun pic from the day before surgery.