This has turned out to be the best Father’s Day for Ian. Colin steadily became more alert and interactive throughout the day. Finally, he has become annoyed with all of the leads, IVs, and his head dressing!
Eating was an all-day event, including everything from apple sauce and pudding to fried rice, meatloaf, chicken, broccoli, corn, mashed potatoes and a host of other things. He fed himself the chicken and broccoli by hand and tried using the fork for the meatloaf, corn and mashed potatoes.
Aunt Polly and Uncle Steve came to visit and made him smile. He also enjoyed playing with two of the nurses. Best of all, he spent the day with his big brother Aidan, who fed him pudding and charmed some chocolate out of one of the nurses.
Aidan was able to play T-ball yesterday with dad and is becoming acclimated to the environment in the hospital. This is a great opportunity for him to ask questions and get to know a little more about how Colin’s life has been over the past week. Without these couple of days, it has been a mystery for him. Aidan is even making a friend, a 7-year-old boy who is recovering from neurosurgery down the hall.
Colin’s improvements even put a spring in Dr. Tobias’s step. He said that we will continue the progression towards clamping off the drain in Colin’s head tomorrow and that his appetite and interactivity are encouraging.
Colin played with Play-Doh today using both hands, although the rightside is still weaker. He also fed himself goldfish crackers with both hands; once he figured out that he could transfer from the right to the left, he stopped using the right, but he made a few successful (if frustrating) attempts.
When looking at the continuum of the treatment that Colin will receive, this surgery is just the first step, yet it is also encouraging to see how well he is dealing with it and recovering from it.
Before writing this, Colin kept holding out his left hand, which is now encased in a diaper to keep him from yanking at the drain and IVs. It looks like a boxing glove, which gives an aggressive cast to his movements. However, we realized that he was reaching out to Mom for a hug and a kiss. Needless to say, there was a vigorous and happy exchange of kisses for our boy. Coming down to write this, I left Dad and Aidan continuing to administer that good medicine.