Oh so Depressed

We went into the hospital this morning and got there just before the physical therapist and the occupational therapist came in to see Jacob.  I guess to they took him in for a chest xray this morning because he had a rattle in his chest, but luckily that turned out to be nothing and cleared up later.  He did a bit better than yesterday with the therapy, but still only lasted about 20 minutes.  He seemed pretty wiped out and as I watched him and talked to him I began to realize that he just seemed so depressed.  It made me feel very sad.  How do you tell a 2 yr old not to be depressed?  How do you make them feel better when they have to lay in a bed all day long? Especially when they don't really know what you are doing to them to begin with.

Well the good news was that today they clamped off Jacob's drain in is head to test it to see how it would do.  With the drain clamped off, we could take him out of bed more, sit him up more and just get him a bit more mobile.  At least it started out as good news.  After about a half a day of being clamped, we noticed he started leaking out of the drain.  So the nurse practitioner from neurosurgery had to come and asses the situation.  She cleaned things up a bit, put new dressing on, and noticed he had some fluid puffing on the left side and told us we had to unclamp the drain for a while.  So much for Jacob's freedom.  They unclamped the drain, and let it run at a lower pressure to take out some of that fluid and after an hour came to turn up the pressure a bit.  Jacob was doing pretty good, but by the time the changeover for the nurses came, he was leaking a bit again, so they had to turn the pressure back down a bit.  We will just have to see where it is at in the morning.  Dr. Ojemann did say that it happens often and that tomorrow the drain was going to come out regardless.  I guess what that will mean though is that we will just have to hope it does not create too much pressure in the head and cause too much fluid to be on the left side of his skull.  I guess they know what they are doing better than I do (since they are the experts, and I am not). 

I forgot to post this photo of Jacob's incision yesterday.  We were pretty impressed with the amount of hair that they left.  we even mentioned that to Dr. Ojemann and he told us that since he lost his hair a few years ago he had a lot more respect for hair now, so he liked to leave as much as he could.  I thought that was a pretty good answer.

Joshua hung out at the hospital with us pretty much most of the day and did pretty well.  He worked on his reading work for school and practiced writing out his numbers from 1 to 25 or so.  He also said that when they take out the drain to Jacob's head he will not be afraid of him or to touch him then, because I guess that is what has really been bothering him.  I suppose that is pretty good news, especially because I think Josh can help break Jacob out of his little funk.  He did go another day with eating well, but today he did not poop.  Hopefully tomorrow he will take care of that little problem.  I would hate to see him have to get another suppository. 
By the way I think I have forgottent to report that so far Jacob has not had a seizure since before he had the surgery on March 10th. :)