A peaceful weekend

I am always surprised by who is following this blog regularly. I meet people, nearly daily, that tell me they are following on the blog. That is a comfort for us, to know that people are reading, praying, and thinking of my dad. Thank you everyone.

We wish we had leaps of progress to report at each post, but for right now, that is not the rate he is supposed to be healing at. Slow and steady wins the race, right? We hope so! In some ways it is getting harder, because his progress is not as visible. Before, we could see his road rash heal, we could count the percentage of oxygen they were giving him, we could read how much pressure they had to use to open his lungs, we could wait for the surgeries on his arm and leg, we could move him to Kindred Hospital, and various other things to see and do. Now his body looks pretty much recovered, except his arm and leg, and a few small scabs. All the healing is going on inside, I am sure his spleen is still healing, his bones of course, and most importantly his brain. These things are much more difficult to see.

So this morning my sister, Angie, and her family (husband Brad, and 4 little boys) came in from Michigan. Most of them will continue to a family reunion in Utah, but return next week. Angie, and Drewbie, the baby will stay here. We all went down the Kindred this evening and saw dad. The two oldest boys were the first of the grandkids to see "Grampa." They were prepared, and did a good job talking to him, and wishing him well. The 8 year old at first didn't like the external fixator on his leg, but quickly became used to it. They asked what everything was on him, and the walls. We explained trach's, the humidifier for the trach, the g-tube, the food for the g-tube, the collection jar for his throat/mouth secretions, the numbers representing his heart rate, and oxygen saturation levels, even the smoke detector and sprinkler, which I am pretty sure they already knew, but they were just on a roll.

Dad seemed sleepy tonight. I realize this is weird to say when someone is in a coma, but there are times when he is more aware and times when he is just sleeping. Tonight he was just sleeping, which was good for the little boys. He coughed a little bit, but not much. There is blood coming out in his sputum, and they are doing the tests to make sure it isn't pneumonia, but the RT (Respiratory Therapist) thought it was most likely do to suction trauma, or if you cough really hard you can rupture capillaries in the airways. We hope it is just that, and not pneumonia, although they will probably be able to handle it pretty well.

I started reading a small book called "The Uses of Adversity," and in it I felt like there was an interesting point made about our faith. He said basically that the Church and the Gospel of Jesus Christ is not necessarily protection from terrible things, but it is a resource to be used when difficult things come upon us. I don't think any of us thought that, "oh, Doran was such a good man, how could this happen?" but it is comforting to know that the Church is there for us to use as a crutch and lift ourselves as much as we can, and then Christ's gospel will lift us the rest of the way.

Whenever I get to an end of these posts, I always feel like I am missing something, so I sit and think for a bit, but nothing comes.

I apologize because I feel I am a wordy writer and I tend to overuse the word "that." (see four "I"'s in one sentence!) Please overlook any mistakes.