Incredibly Poor Timing - 8:40am

Sunday for Cole continued with a mixed pattern similar to the last two days. We are seeing continued decreasing swelling in his eyes, face and body. He was even cracking his left eye open at us a few times. We are also seeing some of his mannerisms returning, like sucking his tongue and tapping his chin with his hand. However, Cole continues to recover much slower than expected. He is still sleeping almost constantly. Also, he continues to cry, apparently in pain, each time we move him and this leads to a behavior we haven't seen since his early months of life, breath holding. So he cries, and doesn't breath in, turns dusky and even a little blue. We blow in his face, turn on some oxygen and eventually he takes a breath, but it is still a little scary, especially for any of our nurses who haven't seen it before.

We also got the results back from Cole's MRI. The good news is that there does not appear to be any clear brain trauma that would explain his slow recovery. The bad news, they found several infarcts or mini-strokes in his frontal cortex. The Neurosurgeons are very perplexed by this and cannot find an explanation for the pattern of damage. Also, they have no idea as to the effect this would have, but it would not very well explain his slow recovery. Here again proves the rule; the more we know, the more we realize what we don't know. We were very lucky to have the opportunity Sunday to attend church services and partake of the sacrament at the hospital. The local LDS student branches provide services to Primary's and UofU hospitals. The services are very brief, but very powerful and touching. The leaders always refer to Primary's being sacred ground and we couldn't agree more. The providers there are doing God's work - providing loving care for his children. We are so blessed.

And now for the poor timing part. Sunday morning Shawn was feeling increasingly yucky with stomach pain and chills. Now mind you, he had eaten a sub sandwich that had sat out in our room for about 10 hours, but he has a rather iron stomach. In fact he once ate a bowl of chili only to have Teri start eating hers and she noticed an off taste. Sure enough it had fermented. Shawn said "I thought it had kinda a zing I hadn't tasted before." He never got sick, and it didn't effect him in the least, well except for making him weirder than he already was. Anyway, in the early afternoon Shawn jumped up and promptly threw up in the trash can. Teri averted her eyes, but couldn't avert her ears. Luckily, it did not lead to a barf-a-rama throughout the room and pod. Teri was planning on going home Sunday evening as she had to pick up the dogs from boarding and she had to go to work the next day, but now we both had to head home so that Shawn did not give what ever bug he had to Cole or any of the other children or employees there. This was very hard, to leave our sweet baby when he was still needing so much comfort.

We were comforted by the fact that we would be leaving him in the very loving and competent care of his nurses, but it was still very hard. One thing that was comforting at this time was his sweet loving Grandma Jackie came up in the afternoon. He slept most of the time she was there, but the last 20 minutes, he was stirring. She began to sing Rock-a-by baby to him and he broke out into a big smile - the first since we entered the hospital. She was able to capture a picture of it, and we hope to post it soon.

Teri got up very early this morning and went in to the hospital before work. Dr. Walker, Cole's neurosurgeon, wanted to meet with us and discuss a plan. Dr. Walker has been out of town throughout the latter part of last week and the weekend. He is in town today, but leaves for 2 more days tomorrow. Cole's CSF (cerebral-spinal fluid) looks very clear which is a good sign that they can re-internalize Cole's shunt soon and we can go home. If they re-internalized Cole's shunt while we still had blood coming out with his CSF, the blood could clot and block his shunt, and we'd be in for another surgery, so we are fine with waiting until the right time. Dr. Walker is very frustrated with Cole's slow recovery and you can tell it really bugs him to not have an explanation. The plan is to re-internalize his shunt either tomorrow or Thursday.

So Shawn is sitting home going crazy not to be with his son at all today and Teri is at work going crazy not to be with her son until this afternoon. Luckily Grandma Jackie is on her way up to be with her sweet baby for the morning and afternoon. We love you so much Mom. We are so lucky to have such wonderful family and friends who care for Cole so much. We'll let you know more when we know more. Love to all of you. Thank you for all your prayers and don't forget to thank Heavenly Father for every moment we get to spend with each other.