In fair condition today

Sara's fever seems to have broken. She was 98 this morning, down from a steady 99.5 plus for the last 5-6 days. We still do not know the source of her infection, but she seems to be responding to antibiotics.

I was with her lastnight for a long time. It was a pretty hard night. She's struggling a lot to breathe deep and cough. She's moving stuff up out of her lungs but its hard on her. She has a lot more oral secretions and those are going down the back of her throat. She feels sometimes like she's going to choke and tries to force a cough. When she does cough, she launches herself forward (to the shock of everyone nearby) with as much force as she can muster. She's trying. We just kept suctioning her, rubbing the back of her neck (been hurting lately) and encouraging deep breathing. Her oxygen saturations were consistently lower lastnight (high 80s, low 90s) and I did not leave until I saw them in the upper 90s where they belong.

Nurse-Gerald is really good with her. He has been very vigilant about keeping her clean, cleaning any infection access point thoroughly, and having others check to ensure he hasn't missed anything. He's been making sure she's getting bathed twice a day, since she has had the fever and sweating and just gets real uncomfortable. I got a good look at her skin lastnight and she has no skin breakdown and is in very good condition all around. That 19 year old skin is perfect even after almost 7 months in bed.

She and I held hands and watched the Dancing with the Stars final (Yeah! Christy Yamaguchi won!!). We were both trying to watch, and her cough, and me suction, and a couple of times we ended up both laughing and coughing together when i'd swallow funny. Nurse-Gerald and I had trouble catching her a couple of times when she coughed. She's very strong. Don't make any mistake - she's still got muscles and a handful, voluntary or not.

Her eyes are tracking a little straighter, but not totally back the way they were. My gut is screetching at me to not ignore this and I'm trying to get ahold of the right person (her Neurologist and Neurosurgeon from Kaiser-Sacramento) to get their input. The fact that her fever seems to have broken this morning makes me feel better.

Obviously, moving to Kaiser-Vallejo and then home is on hold until she's stable again. Its so hard to keep her that way when she needs pulmonary rehab and is in the presence of so many nasty bugs around there. She and I are just trying to do our own rehab thing. The ICU staff is being very vigilant with her and contact precautions. They know how risky it is getting with her.

I have a call into her doctor again today to see if anything explanatory has grown out of cultures. And then I will get on the phone with Kaiser-Sacramento and her new primary care physician to get get us all on the same page.