JOHN BREATHED OFF OF THE VENTILATOR FOR 30 MINUTES TODAY! He makes them wait each day until I get there before he will let them take him off. =) I love John so much and it makes me so happy to be there with him as he gets better each day!

He chose to opt out of physical therapy this morning because he was tired but before I went to work for noon I moved him around some in place of PT. He slept a good bit today and got some well needed rest. Physical therapy comes only on week days so I will do his physical therapy with him over the weekend, minus getting into the trauma chair. I have learned a lot of good tips of stretching John and moving him around so I think we will do good!

I’m sure that some or all of you are wondering how John communicates right now. He has the trach now to breath with the vent so he can not use his voice right now. However John is getting really good at lip speaking. Some of the hospital staff are getting a little better each time but usually I translate for him so he can talk to the nurses and respiratory people, ect.  They are hoping to slowly ween John off of the vent and then he will get a speaking valve that a flap closes for his voice to be able to come out of his mouth as usual! They said that his voice will sound relatively normal and OF COURSE John was disappointed because he would rather sound like a robot! He is so silly!

April and Joe (John’s sister and brother-in-law) sent John some cool socks in the mail as John requested! He was super excited to get all kinds of socks! He wore Siracha socks all day and after his bath he wanted to wear these monster ones! We love them and think they are so fun! I know other goodies are on the way and I know John will be so excited to receive little goodies! I got him NFL Redskins rubber bracelets! We each wear one now and the nurses, physical therapist, and Respiratory Therapist give him a hard time when they come in the room about not being a Cowboys or Saints fan! He thinks it’s super funny and it gives them all something to talk about when they come bug him all day!

As requested by myself before, We would still love for friends and family to send John funny videos! He really enjoys knowing everyone wants to cheer him up even if it’s a short little video! (Please refrain from prayers, talking about his injury, or anything about his situation. Just a little video that is funny or to tell him you’re thinking about him!)

NOW I SLEEP! BYE!

John breathed 25 minutes on his own this morning off of the ventilator! A little more progress is made each day! We are so proud of him pushing through the breathing because it’s really difficult since he hasn’t used his lungs and check muscles on his own in a month. They changed his oxygen down to 40% on the ventilator so that is so much closer to being able to come off of it!

He also had his fourth day in the trauma chair to have some more time up and out of the bed. John has also been pampered by being nicely manicured with eucalyptus lotion, eucalyptus chapstick, warm bacon socks, and getting some nice foot and hand massages from his girlfriend.

   Charlie Mattison got to come visit her daddy this morning! John was so happy to see her and he was makes spit noises at her and she liked it! He even got to kiss her sweet little head and she absolutely loved that! She was so curious of all the different tubes and connections on daddy! She wanted to pull them out and take him home! It was a really good visit and helped cheer him up some!

They changed John’s feeding from a little bit every hour to 8 ounces every four hours. That will help him get on more of an eating schedule to get ready to go to rehab. We are also taking all other small steps to prepare paperwork wise on getting him over to Trinity Neurological Rehabilitation Center. It is a work in progress and not a quick thing to get him transferred over!  At least we are allowed to stay in the ICU Unit and not the recovery floor until we leave though because up there is two people to a tiny room and hardly and a 6 to 1 patient to nurse ratio. They let us stay in ICU since John has more needs being on the ventilator.

This morning John got to get out of bed and into a chair again for an hour. He had a spontaneous breathing trial this morning and lasted ten minutes again! They are doing that three times a day for now. The ventilator is set to a high volume now set to 1100. They started off at 900 when moving it up and all of the weeks before it was normally at 500. That is the size of the breathe he inhales. The 1100 volume is a huge breathe in so he breathes slower deeper breathes. The reasoning behind a deeper breath is so stretch out his lungs to help build his chest muscles back up and expand the lung.

Right now they are starting a new breathing treatment machine every six hours. This new machine  pushes air really fast into his lungs and sucks the air back out really fast. (Almost like a plunger) The purpose of this machine is to help get the secretions loose so they can suction out his lungs after each time of doing this.

Later on today, John will have a swallow study to do an x-ray of him swallowing to make sure it goes down the right tube.

I know you probably couldn’t guess this but………WE HAVE BEEN WATCHING FOOTBALL ALL DAY! He just now asked finally to watch something else. So now we are watching Tosh.0 and relaxing now that they are done picking at him for a little while.  John is happy about the REDSKINS win last night too! We also got approval for a Charlie Mattison visit again as soon as John wants her to come in. John had me put the “lemon sticks” in the water that we dip the sponge sticks in to have his own “hospital lemonade” earlier today  and I just went and got him some Vitamin Water to dip his sponge sticks in so now he actually had something real from the outside world!

So now I’m done writing this to all of you and going to watch some television with my boyfriend and possibly take a nap if he will ever go to sleep!

John is currently watching football and wishing he could have a fresh lemonade with ice! He is not able to have anything to eat or drink through his mouth right now but they will be doing a swallow study in a little while to see if he is ready for liquids yet. As of now they give him these frozen things that look like one sided giant q-tips that have lemon flavor. It’s almost like a little sucker to moisten his mouth. I guess that is where the lemonade craving came from.

Earlier this morning around 9:30 am, John was moved to a chair for about an hour so that he could sit up and get moved around. They also did physical therapy before they moved him and he did a really good job of that too! He enjoyed getting out the the bed for the first time in over four weeks. He got to sit by the window and look out to the not so great view but at least he got a better view of outside!

The rehabilitation team came through earlier and put in an order for a person from Trinity Rehab to come see how John is doing. The consult from Trinity will be the one who decides when they are ready for John to head over there. There has not been a specific time or date set up as to when they are coming to do so but we will keep you informed as to when that happens.

 If anyone would like to send John Charles anything to cheer him up, we can’t have any flowers or big things but COOL SOCKS (Redskins, beer, bacon, football, despicable me, or anything else fun that he likes!) would be a great little gift to cheer him up. That is the only thing he has asked for so far so I’m going to make this happen and if you would like to send some, please email me matti.breaux@gmail.com and I will tell you where to send them! =)

Today John had a spontaneous breathing trial that resulted in good progress. He is slowly but surely able to breathe a little bit longer on his own each time. It is a very slow process and something that take a while to get off of the vent. He also had some physical therapy this morning. It’s a little difficult at first because he has been asleep for a while but each day moving his muscles will help him have more shoulder strength and help with stiffness in other parts of his body.

For the rest of the day we will be watching Shark Week and resting. If anyone would like to make a video just to cheer him up and say hi. Send video to my email or phone. (Please refrain from talking about the accident, prayers, or anything to do with his condition. Just a fun video to make him smile that is “off topic” would be refreshing and nice to help get his mind off of things.)

Today, We finally got a little news as to what the next step will be for John. Over the weekend and beginning of next week, the doctors will do “spontaneous-breathing trials” to see how well John can breathe off of the vent for a little bit at a time. Sometime next week, doctors will come assess how John is doing and EVICT him from ICU! YAY! (We are sick of this place!)

Then we will be going to Trinity Neurological Rehab here in Louisiana. It is a rehab that will take John on the ventilator until we can move ourselves to Oregon. Once in Oregon, We will have John at a nice rehab in the Portland area that will try and ween him off of the ventilator. Rehab here and in Portland will work with John in strengthening his muscles to breathe on his own eventually and work with him on physical therapy.

We are so happy to know we are finally making some damn progress around here! John is excited for us all to be moving to Oregon. He is happy about getting some PT soon to try and get some of his strength back. Charlie Mattison, Dee, and I are so proud of how far John has come in the past couple of weeks. We finally got ONE of the little weights off of our shoulders after finally hearing some good news!

10:00 am visit:

Today, not much has changed. John is still resting comfortably under heavy sedation. He had a fever over the past couple of days but he has now come down to a normal temperature. He had a neat little cooling blanket to get it back down. John’s vent setting is at 60% and his oxygen saturation is 96%. He will begin tube feedings again today now that he is off of the paralytic.

John will not have surgery for his trach and peg today. They would like to make sure his breathing is steady for a longer time. His PEEPS are 12, they would like to lower him down closer to 5. As far as scheduling surgery, John will be squeezed in last minute, HOPEFULLY this weekend but there is not a specific day or time set.

John will remain heavily sedated for the day, taking advantage of his roller coaster bed and getting his much needed rest before we finally get to surgery.

5:00 pm visit:

No Changes have been made to his ventilator today. They did remove John’s staples from the back of his neck from the surgery he had on Friday, July 18th, the second day he was here. The surgery was to re-align his vertebrae from the break in his neck. The surgeons fused together vertebrae 3 through 7 and put in two blots to hold everything in place.

The plan for the night is to continue to let John rest under sedation to keep him relaxed and comfy. We will add a new update tomorrow when doctors come in for their rounds to assess John’s ventilator settings and decide what steps will be taken next to get us closer to surgery.