Dad had his facial reconstruction surgery this afternoon and it went well.  He was in surgery for about 2 1/2 hours.  There were titanium plates placed under Dad's right eye and on the left side of his nose.  His right eye socket also needed to be  built up with a plastic piece reinforced with titanium mesh.  His nose was splinted and his eye will be covered with a patch for about 24 hours.  This surgery was for "looks" and will have no impact on the nerve damage and vision issues in Dad's right eye.  That is something that will have to heal itself and Dad will probably always have at least some vision loss in that eye as well as a droopy eyelid.  The Dr. feels that with time it probably should improve. 

Dad has had a much quieter day today and has been resting more peacefully.  There have not been any more hospital escape attempts! 

Medically, he has had a small setback.  When they took his chest x-ray this morning they found that his lungs were looking quite a bit worse than yesterday.  They are now concerned and watching him for pneumonia again.  They are treating this with bi-hourly breathing treatments of albuterol and lung suctioning.  They are hoping that this will clear his lungs out. If not, he may need to return to the ICU.  So far, his lungs seem to be responding to the treatments and are sounding better.  The morning chest x-ray should give us a fuller picture. 

Due to the surgery schedule and his breathing treatments, Dad did not have any physical therapy today.  He did, however, have a speech therapist come and work with him for a bit.  Once again Mike was the lucky child who was there to witness Dad speaking.  The therapist hooks a device onto his trach that allows enough air to get pushed past it for him to verbalize.  He again was able to name my mom and Mike.  He also said, "I love you" to my mom.  His voice seemed a bit stronger today, but it still takes him extra time to get the words out. 

The therapist also gave him a pen and paper and asked him to write some answers to questions.  First they asked him to write his name, which he was able to do, although he wrote "Ed" in the middle of about 8 letters.   When she asked him how many kids he has, he wrote 17, but then circled the 7.  She asked him how old he is and he thought about it but could not verbalize it.  She asked him if he was older than 25, to which he gave her a look like, "get real," so then she asked if he is older than my mom.  He nodded yes to this.  He was not able to write how old he is, either, until they told him his age, and then he was able to write it. 

The nurse told Mike that she has seen a lot of progress in Dad over the last three days.  It is impossible to predict how long recovery from brain injuries will take.  The most important thing is that Dad is progressing each day, which is the best sign that they can hope for.