Sunday Night Shaney Update and a couple pics

As Sunday draws to an end, I thought I'd jot a quick weekend wrap up—that is, if you can "jot" on a computer. (And as it turned out, it wasn't all that quick, but keep reading. -Chris)

Compared to a couple days ago, Shane is doing much better. The major issue, a strep infection of his neck tissue and blood, has been identified and addressed. It's not gone yet—blood cultures will hopefully confirm that soon—but it's on its way out. That's what I call good riddance.

Today's big step was getting the swelling down. Frankly, he does this by eliminating all the excess fluid through a catheter into a bag (on a related note, I made sure to snap a pic of his pee bag when it was really full. Being an almost four year old boy, he tends to get a kick out of anything having to do with pee and poop, especially a bag full of it...and especially if he made it). If you roll your mouse over the pic below, you'll see a before/after snapshot of the redness and swelling on Shane's neck (the lines are pen markings denoting the infection's reach):



I'll admit, these pictures don't do the situation justice. The "before" pic was actually taken prior to the swelling and redness getting really bad (at which point it looked like Shane had a shiny red balloon fused to his neck) and the "after" pic was taken earlier this morning before the swelling went down even more. So take each photo, mentally calculate for an exponential worse/better factor of 2.837 in the proper direction and you'll get a clearer picture of the positive pendulum swing this nifty rollover pic represents.

Shane's more awake and aware than he has been in the past few days. He still knows what he wants—this pic represents the fruition of his very specific requests for the Spiderman balloon, his stuffed penguin and his favorite hat (featuring Spiderman, of course):



If he needed something else, he tugged his Spiderman balloon to get our attention. But then, everything he does right now gets our attention...

He's slowly being weened off of all his meds and his food drip will be stopped at 2am in anticipation of potential extubation tomorrowation (sorry, got carried away with the "tions"). I'm not getting my hopes up yet, we'll see what they say during rounds in the morning.

Here's another pic of Ky, me and Shaney—my brother took it with my camera when we weren't looking:




Finally for today, I'd like to tell you about my amazing wife, Kylee. It goes without saying that she is the single bestest mom I know (present moms excluded, of course :::wink:::), but I'll say it anyway: she is the single best mom I know. She cares so much for our boys, it hurts. Ky has sacrificed more than I can imagine to give our little guys the care, compassion, education and tools they need to grow into the incredible young men they're becoming.

Not only that, but she somehow finds time to care about things outside our house as well (she's much better at this than I am). I laugh when she answers a survey phone call and then stays on the the line, actually answering their questions with honesty and conviction. "Things won't change if I don't let them know," she states matter-of-factly. And she's right. For this reason, and a million reasons just like it, the world is a better place because of her.

Kylee made this at the hospital in the downtime we've had while tending to Shaney:



Tell me that's not the cutest little hat you've ever seen in your entire hat-seeing life. The kicker is that it matches a boat-neck sweater she also made...appropriately sized for some teeny tiny lucky kiddo. That's because almost every one of her knitting projects go to charity—and those that don't, go to friends and family as gifts (complete with sweet handspun custom cardboard tags).

She's also knitting a bunch of wool helmet liners for US troops overseas and 7" sqares that get sewn together into blankets for those in need of warmth, but can't provide it themselves.

I could go on for another few hundred pages, but I think you get the point.

Yes, the world is a better place because of Kylee...and our boys will be better men because of her, too.

I love you, Kylee, we're gonna get through this...