That's probably the face Sam would have if he knew that I posted that picture.  Not a big selfie fan, that one. Today has been a very good day in the grand scheme of things.  His ICP is still lower than 20.  The monitors measuring brain activity while in such a suppressed state are reading exactly where they want them.  His temp has been a little uppity.  When they cool him down, he doesn't stop cooling.  When they try to warm him up, he does the same thing in the opposite direction.  Like I said in a previous post, overachiever.

Where we stand right now, is that he needs to be on the paralytic for 48 hours.  At that point, provided his ICP holds, they will start weaning him off slowly.  But from what they have told us, this drug stays in the system for quite a while.  Additionally, while 5 days is the average for swelling to go down, it could be longer.  Severe trauma and a younger age tend to extend that time.  As you get older, apparently, your brain starts losing mass, which explains a lot about my own brain function even prior to this.  In any case, Sam has both of those working against him.  However, it's still not out of the question for him to start decreasing swelling at any point since we're past the 5 days.  Like everything else, we'll have to wait and see.

After a rough day yesterday, and a slightly promising day today, I decided to listen to my peso calls.  If you don't know what those are, (and why the heck would you?) in my Spanish classes the students need to get a certain number of pesos by speaking.  At the end of the term, which is basically now, they tend to get a little desperate, and I give them an opportunity to leave me a voicemail in Spanish to earn them.  As I'm listening, some of them mentioned Sam--while speaking in Spanish--and were incredibly sweet.  I also got one voicemail from a former student who left me a loooong message of support and some of her favorite Bible verses regarding Sam.  I have been hearing from students from just about every place I've taught, including 2 or 3 from when I was pregnant with Sam & Sarah.  It has just been incredible. 

Something I keep coming back to is that, in between messages, if I don't play the next one quickly enough, the iTunes library starts playing the next track.  The track that stuck with me is a recording of a song that Sarah sang in worship this summer, with Sean on violin and Jim on piano.  It was incredibly comforting today, and I've just been playing it over and over.  The link is below.  There's no video really.  As always, we appreciate your prayers, kind words and offers of help, not just for us, but for Kyle, Jay, Lily, and all of those fighting to recover from illness and injury here.  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6sa_RklUvLI