Good Improvement

Yesterday Roscoe showed a good amount of improvement, dropping his oxygen requirements from 100% oxygen at 50 breaths/minute to 70% oxygen at 30 breaths/minute within 24 hours after the surgery. He went the whole day without desaturating. What was even more amazing to me was that he underwent a repositioning and redressing of his existing PICC line while he was awake, and his heart rate didn't go above 170 and his oxygen didn't drop below 85%. He also got a second PICC line inserted so that they wouldn't have to keep poking him for new IVs.

His eyes were watery because the fan was on. No crying here.

Another good thing was that when I read him a book, he would pay attention to the pictures. The past few weeks he has typically gotten aggravated before we could reach the end of the book:

He is still on very heavy sedation and painkiller medication, so it's not like he's instantly back to normal. He was awake for much more of the day than he had been in the past 3 weeks, mostly because when he was awake he wasn't agitated. For most of the day he sat there like this:

His eyes look black because I didn't have the camera settings quite right. As a side effect of all of the medication they are injecting, he had spells where his tongue would dart around in his mouth. To me it looked like the face an old man makes when he is anxiously awaiting a hot bowl of soup and has nothing else to occupy his mind until it arrives:

We are hoping that these improvements continue and that they will prove to the surgeons that Roscoe will be stable enough to safely operate on in about a week. While we aren't thrilled that he is facing a very dangerous surgery where there is a very real threat that he won't survive, we are hoping that this is the start of his turnaround that will eventually result in him coming home healthy. God has continued to provide along this rocky road we're calling Roscoe's Story. We just need to find the next breadcrumb he's laid down to lead us along ...