I've been trying my hardest to see some humor in this whole thing, but I must admit it's been difficult. At least now I have the story (already told to Emily) of Brendan spending days talking about watching "Totoro" with Emily only to announce, after I've left for the hospital, that he doesn't actually have a copy of "Totoro." Thank you Ms. Dubrava for bringing a VHS copy, and thank you Ken for making the trip home to get our DVD.

Emily did a 12-hour wean on the ventilator yesterday and spent 6 hours up in a chair. Very hard work, but she did great. This morning she started working on the trach collar and (I really hope Shari from St. Anthony's reads this) she had a lower respiratory rate, lower heart heart and high oxygen saturation on the trach collar than she's ever had on her weans. She was originally going to do a 4-hour stint on the trach collar, but when I left she was at 8 hours and her day RT said that if she resisted going back on the ventilator to rest overnight that we should leave her on the collar. This is really a huge development. Tomorrow the Speech Therapist will decide if we can cap the trach and let her try to breath on her own AND TALK!!!!

My assignments for the weekend were to work on her visual tracking, which I did, introduce new tactile sensations, which I did, and get her up in the chair for 2 hours each day, which I greatly exceeded (hopefully Beth Anne will approve of the longer chair time - we were going for 8 hours today). One assignment I wasn't given, but decided to try anyway, was to ask her to reach for my hand and squeeze it if she wanted me to do what I was offering. In the first case it was to continue to read to her and in the second it was to stop reading and watch an episode of Buffy. I didn't just ask her to squeeze my hand, I asked to take my hand and squeeze it. I hope her therapists agree that this is as big a deal as I think it is.

Emily was very sleepy today. I had a terrible time waking her up until about 1:30 this afternoon (morning in teen-land). I told her she was boring! She was wide awake for quiet time at 3:00, so Ken was going to read to her since she'd slept through her morning high-stim. I wonder if she wasn't just so much more comfortable without the weight and tension of the ventilator tubes on her neck that she was just catching up. In any event I hope she falls asleep tonight so that Ken can get some rest - it's incredibly difficult (read impossible) to leave her alone when she's awake.

Thanks for all your thoughts and prayers.