Early Edition

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Tuesday, August 16, 2005 – 3:00 AM
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Here are some random ramblings and thoughts. (What else could I do
but ramble at 3AM?) I actually got a little sleep last night. We
sent son's #1, 2, and 3 to cousin #1's house last night. My sweet
wife and I went down at 10, and I didn't wake up until 2. After
rolling around for an hour, I figured I could do something more
productive and wrote this issue. So, here you go.

After the MRI on Saturday, and most of the day Sunday before
surgery, son #4 was typical `Jimmy'. He was bouncing on the bed,
rolling around (getting tangled in all of his lines) and flirting
with all of the nurses. They kept saying that he's stolen
everyone's hearts that met him. The CT tech even went to his
`special' closet and gave him a big stuffed purple dragon. After
the MRI on Saturday and after they admitted him, they had him on a
lot of IV liquids. It was in one end and out the other. They
wouldn't let him get up to go to the bathroom, so they had what the
nurse called a `special bottle' for him to go in. He thought that
was the coolest thing in the world. The first time he went, he
hesitated and looked to my sweet wife and me for reassurance. We
told him he could go, but I smiled and said, "But if you ever try
this at home..." He laughed. Then, about every 45 minutes after
that he'd say, "I want to pee in my special bottle!" He'd jump up
and do his business. One time he asked the nurse, "Why are you
shutting the curtain?" She replied, "For your privacy." He thought
for a second or two and started to say something, then just said,
"Oh, ok." And did his business.

Sunday before the surgery, we kind of told him that there was a
`big bad germ' in his head that they were going to take out. He was
ok with that, until just before surgery when we told him `how' they
were going to do it. He said, "No dad. Don't cut a hole in my head.
Don't let them hurt my body." Talk about heart wrenching. Then he
crawled onto my sweet wife's lap and went down for a nap. He slept
all the way to the operating room where they put him all the way
under.

Monday we spent the entire day at the hospital with him. In the
morning they had him heavily sedated. But every time an alarm went
off, they wanted to move him or give more medicine, he would
partially wake up and try to speak and move around. He wanted to
know what was going on and didn't want to be asleep. They kept
increasing the dose of his meds so he could stay down. Finally in
the afternoon they gave him something called a paralytic to put him
deeper into an induced type coma. They don't want him to move
around at all while his brain is still swelling. He's doing well
according to the PICU nurses. His numbers are all in line (His
blood pressure, reparatory rate, ICP [intracranial pressure] etc.)

We've had scores and scores of emails, and dozens of phone calls
and visitors. It started to get a little overwhelming and one of
the nurses said, "I've seen people even put up websites and update
people." Wow, I thought, I've got one of those! So, I'll just
update everyone via martysjotd.blogspot.com and hope we don't have
to tell the whole story 15 times a day. Thank you so much for your
prayers and well wishes. Jimmy sends his love too.

Marty