The ventilator is out and Tim's awake

The ventilator is out!!! For that alone this is a great day. There is some unique background on this that I haven’t shared, mainly because I wanted to wait until I was sure about Tim’s prognosis.

On Friday last week, I got a call from the hospital effectively saying “come quickly, his breathing is deteriorating. He wants to talk to you before we do anything.” Needless to say my driving was as close to NASCAR as I could get it on the way to the hospital. DC traffic still managed to make the trip close to 2.5 hours. My stress level kept going up despite Kate’s efforts to slow me down, and Robbie’s comments of “there sure are a lot of horns, Mommy.”

I arrived at Tim’s room and the situation was pretty serious. The doctors told both of us that they needed to put Tim on a ventilator now and they couldn’t tell him for how long or when he would be off of it. Then they left us alone to talk. He asked me what to do and I had no hesitation. I said something along the lines of “You go on the ventilator, it’s your best chance and we’ll all be here waiting for you to wake up.” I’m glad that with everyone’s help, Tim’s toughness, and a lot of prayers, he woke up. Grumpy as sin, but awake.

On a lighter note, the following is a list of some things I really never thought I’d be grateful for, but really am.

1. Fruit Loops – 5 year olds love them and I no longer have any guilt for giving them to Robbie for breakfast.
2. Spongebob – For those of you who watch, no explanation necessary. For the rest of you, well…yes, it IS bad.
3. Spongebob Macaroni – yes you can actually get Kraft Macaroni and cheese shaped like Spongebob.
4. Ibuprofen – It comes in the 500 tablet economy size!!
5. On-line banking – Did you know you can pay all your bills on line with an IPhone? I have become a walking advertisement for Apple.
6. GUH Gift shop – it has candy and really stupid pens that 5 year olds like.
7. Sunshine’s snoring – I actually really missed it while we were away. And she snores like an old man with a deviated septum…
8. Hidden Valley Ranch dressing – If you douse any food with enough of it, Robbie will eat it.
9. No air conditioning – Really (both the house and car air conditioning are on the fritz right now.) When we slept at Elena and Jim’s with air conditioning that worked it was such a contrast we slept REALLY well.
10. Father’s Day 2009 – Tim’s going to be around to see it.

Have a good nite. Liz