Feb 13th 2010

Today was a tough day; a couple big decisions had to be made. The original plan was to keep Mitch on his breathing machine/coma state until Sunday; allowing the botox shots to kick in as it usually takes 2-3 days to do so and it would also allow them to control his pain better. The tube allows them to administer higher levels of pain medicine because they/the machine control his breathing. The issue we had - he was starting to throw up which is bad news with a breathing tube as it will end up in his lungs. So the question was; do we take the tube out and hope we can manage the pain, or do we leave the tube in and hope his lungs don't fill up. We decided to take him out of the drug induced coma and take the breathing tube out. We were pleased that he starting breathing on his own immediately and has yet to have any breathing issues. We are also happy to report that with the tube out his pneumonia is starting to go away.

Although he is out of his fully induced coma state, they kept him pretty sedated all day today and loaded up on pain killers. Although he was under a good amount of sedation we were able to communicate with him for the first time since Wednesday. The first words out of his mouth were "I missed you guys", "I can see" and "I didn't die". All very heart busting comments after what he went through for 3 straight days. He wanted a hug from Annette and I and his Grandpa Fly. It was an interesting transition out of his coma state. The coma medicine broke down all barriers and we could tell what was truly on the forefront of his mind by the questions he was asking. He was very emotional over a number of issues (mainly the medicine causing this) but to a degree we could tell these items were hot topics on his mind. His emotions swung from tears streaming down his checks with gratitude to being ticked off at the world over just the little's of things. It was an emotionally exhausting process for Annette and I.

With every movement he made we were worried about the spasms coming back. He had one little one, on the right side. This was/is very alarming for us because to date every spasm has been on his left side and that is what was treated with the botox. He had the one spasm about two hours after coming out of his coma and nothing the rest of the day. Tomorrow will be the big test as they will ween him off the sedation completely. Needless to say every movement will be viewed with a lot of anxious and worried eyes as we hope and pray the spasms don't come back and the botox is working.

Given Mitch's current condition, the Doctors have asked us to really restrict visitors for Mitch over the next day or so. Words can't justly communicate the support we feel from everyone - thank you.