End of day report for Sunday, January 06

Another solid day of progress (and another brief update). Kim was rocking the low vent settings so well that they decided to just take her off of it entirely for the afternoon.  This means that while she still has her trache tube, it was hooked up to just good old oxygen like you’d get with a nose cannula rather than to the gangly vent machine.  So Kim was doing all her own breathing with zero pressure support! She even did some exercises while under her own steam without any issues. They’ll hook her back up to the vent for the evening so that she gets a good night of sleep, but most likely they’ll pull it again tomorrow for gradually longer periods of time as part of the weaning process.  As she continues to get stronger, they’ll replace the tube with increasingly smaller ones until she’s free of the tube entirely. Somewhere along the line in this process (maybe a week) she’ll be able to start talking a bit and perhaps even drinking something more delicious than diluted apple juice and ice chips. 

Her regular medical team returns tomorrow to discuss how she did over the weekend and make plans for the rest of the week. Based on the hard work she put in with fantastic results, I’m assuming at this point that they’ll just keep going full steam ahead with getting her up and about, with fewer and fewer tubes and machines to lug around. Not to jinx anything, but I’d say there is a pretty decent chance she’ll be home within 2 weeks. More finger crossing please.

Good night!