Tuesday Update For Ben

I got to Ben's room about 1 hour earlier today than I normally do, reason being my friend Judy Arbogast was coming by to have lunch with me in the hospital cafeteria so I wanted to spend a little more time with Ben in the morning. Ben was wide awake when I came in. He immediately tried to talk to me by making the throat sounds. Now that he knows he can do that, there is no stopping him. He was "talking" up a storm all day and I could understand quite a bit of what he was saying. He did get mad now and then when I had trouble making out his words. His vitals were good except for a low-grade fever hovering around 100-101°. They started him on the breathing trials this morning at 7:30 AM and by the time I left at 1:30 PM, he was still on it, so that was already 5 hours. I could tell that he is getting stronger because he kept trying to pull himself up in the bed and kept saying he wanted to get out of bed. Have to watch him because if he does try, he will fall and hurt himself. This is a good sign though because it means he's getting better. His hands, arms, legs and belly were not as puffy today. In fact his belly looked even smaller today than it did yesterday so it appears that his body is starting to do what it is supposed to do with the fluids and wastes. He tried to write again today. He wrote the word "my" but the rest of it I could not make out, but now that he can "croak" out words, he didn't really need to write. Around 9:15 AM, they came in to reposition him and he dozed off for a little while after that. At 10:15 AM, Dr. Mason came in. She said if Ben continues to improve like he has in the past 2 or 3 days, they will start discussing discharging him and transferring him to the Sub-Acute Trach Care Unit, which is a good thing because that means he is getting well and they unit will work with him more than the hospital will, but now I have to start worrying about trying to get him Medi-Cal in case it takes more than the 60 days Kaiser covers at such a unit for him to be able to come home. I have called a lawyer here in the Santa Clarita area who specializes in this kind of case and I have an appointment to see her on Thursday morning. At 10:25 AM, they put Ben's bed into a "sitting up chair position". Once they did that, he really became very "verbal" with his throat sounds. He even told the nurse "I'm Pissed". That's my Ben!