thresholds of relative stress....

while we were goofing around with isaiah and giving him my hat to wear, he got a little stressed out...

he's mostly pretty low-key and content to lounge around in bed- which can sometimes be a disadvantage as we're trying to get him moving around more. he has been really into a new music therapist that just started working here since we got here- she sings railroad songs and plays guitar while he fiddles around with her cool percussion collection. he gets really focused on playing music- yesterday he played a makeshift washboard with a train and set the tempo for the therapist, and really got into the fact that she played to his speed.

we down-sized isaiah's trach tube this afternoon, which moves him one step closer to getting back to having no tube at all. it may require a couple more changes to smaller tubes before we can completely remove it- but we got a bit further along at least. his chest tube is still putting out too much fluid to remove it- so that is becoming the headline issue this week. the ICU team is going to bend the ears of the CV surgeons in the morning to see if they have any thoughts. we get a little nervous when the surgeons start getting involved, so we'll be anxious to hear that they aren't breaking out their calendars to see if they can't squeeze us in to try a surgical solution to the problem. the output level has been dropping off everyday, so hopefully we don't have to listen to any proposals for drastic measures in the near future....