This afternoon, Grair finally made it home! He was super excited to run around the house and play with all his toys. He even enjoyed laying down in his own bed! The PICC line we had been using for antibiotics over the last six weeks is gone, as no growth appeared on the tissue meaning the blood infection has been fought off. Now, we look forward to starting our “normal” summer activities. Thank you for your thoughts and prayers,...

I guess we’ve had waits in the past that have been much more stressful, so this wait is really just a simple counting of days. We are awaiting the final results from the lab on the tissue sample from Grair’s surgery. While the lab continues to check for growth on a daily basis, it takes seven days before they’ll do a final write-off. So far, all results have been negative for bacterial growth. If it is negative again today,...

Grair is getting better every hour. His next hurdles are regaining his strength and his appetite. Each little increment, we see these coming back. While his desire would be to hang out in bed, he’s begun taking some steps and going for rides in the wagon around the hospital. This morning he took walked a short distance on his own, and we really think he’s a few meals away from regaining his strength (he needs some...

Yesterday, Grair moved out of the intensive care floor to the fifth floor for the rest of his recovery. In the morning, before we upstairs, we got a pleasant surprise: one of Grair’s favorite nurses, Liz, was his nurse in the PICU! Lix was also then his nurse when he moved upstairs. Grair got to know Liz during his longer visits last month. The next steps of recovery involve removing a chest tube (used to drain fluids off the chest),...

Thanks to all the positive thoughts, helpful prayers and talented doctors and medical staff, Grair’s surgery has been very successful! The entire procedure lasted around 3 hours, about half the time we originally were told to expect. About one hour in, we got a call from the operating room nurse letting us know Grair was on bypass, Dr. Hammel had removed the old, faulty valve and stent and was in the process of preparing for the new valve....

What was scheduled as a 4-6 hour procedure took a little less than 3 hours today! All went well, and we’re back at the PICU. The total time on bypass was 35 minutes, a new record for Grair! I’ll post more updates this evening, thank you for your prayers and thoughts!

Our nurse just called and things are ahead of schedule. The doctors were expecting a couple of hours to cut through the scar tissue from previous surgeries. Thankfully, they only needed a short time! Grair is on bypass now, and the old valve has been removed. The stent will be out soon and the new valve will go in. Everything is moving much quicker than expected. More updates to come.