Late Day Update

True to the roller coaster metaphor, yesterday was a downer but today we're climbing back up. Blog central got to spend about an hour with RJ this morning and he looks more like the old RJ then he has since he got to the ICU. The swelling in his limbs and abdomen has gone way down and his color looks good - no more redness. One of the nurses said they had a 'spa day' yesterday and helped him clean up and combed his hair. We've heard several comments from staff that even though he is sleeping with tubes coming out of everywhere, they can see the RJ is one handsome guy. We concur.

Now that he is back on the 'old' ventilator, RJ is doing most of the work breathing which is a lot harder than it sounds at this point. He started a new round of chemo today and word on the street is that it will run for four days. We always thought that 'chemo' would be a special bag of medicine delivered on a silver platter and administered with much fanfare, but in reality it is a bunch of little bags of different medicine delivered over time without so much as a salute.

We don't want to jinx anything (and we here at blog central are nothing if not superstitious) but we heard it directly from a doctor that if the chemo that he began to get today doesn't mess up his system, the breathing tube might be able to come out very soon. That is what RJ has wanted for so long that it's hard not to get excited over the mere thought. RJ has managed to get to a good place with all of this - when he's awake, he's really calm and just wants people to sit with him, and he spends a good deal of time asleep and allowing his body to get better.

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving. While you're sitting down to turkey and pie with your loved ones, make sure you hug them extra hard. We've seen firsthand how quickly an ordinary life can change.