14th July: Bastille Day

Simon was similar to yesterday, perhaps a little sleepier. He had a difficult night with the breathing mask. He has been moved to a bed right outside the nursing station where they can monitor him more closely, he is sharing his ward with three women! He seemed happy with that, and when I mentioned that I could perhaps arrange for The Swifts (the Australian women's netball team) to come to visit he perked up tremendously. A little later he patted my bottom. Things are looking up, or down depending on your perspective...
I was able to feed him a little, but he is still very sleepy and he must be alert if he is going to swallow food properly. Unfortunately, the breathing mask is going to have stay on almost 24/7 and he is not going to like this. After the sleep study yesterday, it was discovered that he was experiencing 26 poor episodes per hour of sleep. This is very dangerous because his brain is being starved of oxygen during those episodes. We need to feed his brain with oxygen otherwise he will lose his smarts, which we know are still there. I read him some beat-generation poetry today, Charles Bukowski (although when I told Simon it was beat-generation he seemed to disagree, must look that up). Trouble with these poems is that the language is sometimes a bit racy for an open ward, and so I have had to tidy up the language a bit with phrases like 'I cleared off'.
He is very tired, but makes every effort to communicate with language, his eyes, and his hand. There is certainly feeling in his right arm because he responds to pain, but his hand would not respond today.
There are other good signs, including some things that I cannot tell you about because they are too personal.
Shirley and Margaret were with me today. I am hoping that some visitors can go in the evenings. He listened to a little classical music today, for about five minutes, so I will try a bit more of that. He had just ordered this CD from ebay, and very kindly, the supplier enclosed a note saying get well soon and no charge. That was David Rowe from NSW. Good on ya David.

Marian xx