We have finally made it through January. This is arguably the longest month of my whole life. 😅
Let's start with the burning question of when will Brian be moved to the LTAC. I talked with his case manager this morning and told her about the updates I had, which was just that I had talked with various people at Anthem and did what I could. She was very pleased and said she also reached out to the LTAC last night to give them Brian's update. However, we still don't know when he will be transferred. 🙃 I may have mentioned this before too, but I once spoke to one of the trauma PAs and she mentioned that they typically do not do transfers on the weekend, but the clinical liaison said that they can take transfers over the weekend. So potentially he could still be moved this weekend, or it could be early next week (again...).
Now for more of the medical side, Brian spent the whole day on the trach collar, started at 9:30 and was still on it when we left at 7:30, which is awesome since he hasn't been on it for the past few days due to excess secretions. And just as a reminder, when he is on the trach collar he has to do ALL the work since there is not a machine attached to it. The respiratory therapist also told me that he lowered the oxygen percentage to 33% which is the lowest they put trach patients.
Brian's beard is getting real long lately and he is always reaching to scratch it. We could attempt to shave it, but the difficulty is he has the trach and it is extremely important to not get anything in and around the trach. We also wouldn't be able to shave under the trach. To me, it seems better for Brain to let the hair continue to grow because very soon he will be out of the itchy phase. But I know how irritating it would be to have an itch that just won't go away and that he can't always scratch. I decided to buy him a beard care kit with a balm, an oil, and a bristle brush. We tried out the balm and the brush tonight and Brian seemed to really love them both, but especially the brush. He was like a cat rubbing his face against the brush. I asked Brian if he wanted me to brush his beard again before I left for the night and he gave me a thumbs up! That is the first time I have seen him do that! 🥹
We had another great day today!
🤍
Comments
Post a Comment