Y'all... <sigh>
I really have no words adequate to the task of expressing how grateful I am for your compassion over this past week. I'm especially grateful to you Deb, for passing along my shout box notes so that all concerned could be updated.
(I have been pecking out those updates either from a "WebTV" type connection in my wife's room, or from my cell phone. This is the first opportunity I've had to actually sit down at a real computer (my own, at home) and do this.)
To put the good news of today into one sentence, Lorianne is going to be in a regular old, plain vanilla hospital room come this time tomorrow. The liklihod is also high that they will reduce the size of the trach tube in her throat. They tried just adding the valve that would allow her to use her voice today, but the existing tube occupies too much space in her throat, and she was having to work too hard to get it out. The smaller one(s) will likely be easier.
Yesterday she had physical therapists working with her to get her to sit up on the edge of the bed and stand. Today, when we went into the hospital room, she was sitting in a recliner chair in her room and had been for 2 hours. She had - with a little help and reminder to go easy on her left side from her nurses - moved between the bed and the chair on her own using the walker, and back again. Add to that the fact that she didn't appear so bone crushingly tired - her energy levels are coming back to normal for her - and I was walking amongst the clouds when I left her room this evening to take the boy home.
