Sunday Update For Ben

I got to the hospital a little earlier today because being Sunday, there was not much traffic. Had a little drizzle along the way there, but none on the way home. When I got to Ben's room, they had him on the breathing trial as they are trying to wean him from the ventilator. He was able to stay on the trial for a little over 3 hours today, so he's doing pretty good. His vitals were good the whole time I was there which was 5 1/2 hours. His temperature was right aroung 98.3° to 98.5° the entire time I was there. They had to give him a unit of blood because he is becoming anemic. They told me that the frozen plasma had brought his INR (International Normalized Ratio) down to 1.6 but it still needs to get down to 1.1 so they can do the tracheotomy and the procedure to remove the stomach fluids. They are still giving him Lasix which is a diuretic to try to get him to stop holding water. I was hearing very loud belly noises from him today when I was sitting next to his bed and there was actually some air in the rectal tube bag which means he was getting some of the gas out. Ben was not real responsive while they had him on the breathing trial, but that's normal because he is weaker when they are trying to wean him off the ventilator, but once they turned the vent back on to where he was doing 70% of the breathing on his own, he was very alert and responsive. He helped me when I was exercising his joints and muscles. He kept squeezing my hand and he kept waving his arms around when I would ask him to do that. He seems to understand what I am saying to him and he nods to respond. I finally caught up with Dr. Han to ask him about extending Ben's SDI. He told me I had to talk to the ICU secretary, so I did. She told me to get the extension forms, fill them out, take them to the Kaiser Insurance Office and they will then send them over to the ICU for the doctors to fill out their portion. Now all I have to do it see if I can find the forms online, or I'll have to head over to the Insurance Office on Monday when I'm visiting Ben to pick them up. I don't know if they are the same forms I filled out to start his SDI or if they are different.