Friday, September 17, 2010 7:10 PM, CDT

The doctors have continued to wean down on sedation today, and Elizabeth is still doing well, they decided to extend her antibiotic treatment from 7 to 10 days so that will be over on Monday. I dont think I mentioned before that they started doing HyperInflation Therapy (HIT) on her lungs, which is where they use the bag to inflate her lungs in order to open up all the air sacs an break up any of the "gunk" that could be in her lungs. They have doing this every 8 hours the past few days and it does seem to help her breathing. So we will continue on the wean of sedation and ventilator settings until HOPEFULLY she can come off of all of it. She had some occupational therapy today and got to try and sit up for a little bit, of course she is still getting medications that cause her to a bit weak and drowsy so it was more like she was being held up, but at least she got a break from laying down for a while. They also treated some of the granualtion tissue around the trach site with silver nitrate, Elizabeth didnt seem to mind it, so that was a good thing!

Matt and I were able to clean the trach site today as well as  the suctioning/bagging and then changed out the new trach with supervision/support from the case manager. We were both very nervous and wanted to be sure we were doing everything correctly. The suctioning/bagging and cleaning were all pretty easy and we did without too much of a problem. When it came time to change the trach we both got pretty emotional, actually seeing such a large hole (to us it looks huge) in her throat was devastating and broken our hearts to know we "did" that to her. We were able to make it through changing it and got everything done correctly. We both know that it is what needed to be done, but at the same time its hard knowing that she has had to go through so much and seeing this made it even harder to take.  We will continue to do the suctioning, care, and trach changes from now on as long as Elizabeth's condition remains stable, so that we are ready to do it on our own at home.