Overall today was a pretty good news day. Emily had an encouraging neuro check with her neurosurgeon this morning. She opened her left eye - just a crack, but definitely open - when he asked her to, tried her darndest to stick up her thumb and squeeze his hand, and wiggled her toes. All on vocal instructions. She also had new levels of purposeful movement overnight last night, disconnecting her vent tube from her trach twice. This means that when Ken and I aren't there, her left arm will need to be restrained.

Her CT Scan this afternoon showed no fluid around her lungs, so no need for a chest tube. It did show that the pneumonia is still there and that a small area of her right lung is still collapsed. I was talking to her respiratory therapist and he explained thatt the ventilator doesn't fully inflate her lungs, so it's not really surprising that the small area of her lung that was collapsed two weeks ago is still collapsed. Once she's breathing on her own, it should reinflate without any problem. We won't have the final results of the culture on her pneumonia back until tomorrow, but she seems to be responding to the antibiotics - her fever was under control by the time I left today. The fever is one of the hardest things to deal with (besides the not waking up part obviously) because with a brain injury they worry much more about fever so they put these chilling pads on her to control her body temperature and they'll make her shiver terribly. It's really horrible to watch - I just want to crawl into bed and hold her until she stops. When the shivering starts the nurses give her more sedation to help with the shivering, and then the doctors come by and wonder why they can't get any response to their neuro checks.

It's an incredibly frustrating circle, but by late this afternoon we seemed to have stopped it once again and her sedation was reduced. Hopefully she has a quiet night and another positive check by the doctors in the morning.