Breathless

More news from St Barts - minor setback in that Rick has a bit of a chest infection which meant yesterday going down for an x-ray accompanied by a "trachy trained nurse" with all her emergency gear, now on antibiotics which does seem to have made a difference. He had a go last night breathing with the trachy tube capped off, but couldn't. This morning the doctor established that the wrong tube had been used (one without a hole for breathing) and put it the correct one with a hole; he was then able to breathe but it was hard work. He'll have another go tomorrow. The stitches holding the tracheostomy tube in have now been removed - it's now held on with tape and velcro; the staples are coming out of his neck bit by bit and that is all looking good; the plastic surgeon has re-dressed his arm (where the flap was taken from) and commented how well that was doing. He does have a revised date of discharge which is now next Monday - the nurses thought that the bed manager was a bit premature in wanting her/his bed back - and that it is not significant. Oh yes, he did swallow the blue water and it didn't leak out anywhere it shouldn't - his neck is officially water-tight!
All in all he is making good progress. One more thing, Rick asks me about whether there have been any comments for his blog and I know that these later ones are not what the earlier ones have been (by a different author) but if anyone does have the inclination to add a message he would be very pleased to hear about it.
More tomorrow,
Catherine