Not much change over night. For Friday's 24 hour period, the right chest tube put out about 34 ml (before surgery it was up around 80 or more) and the left chest tube put out about 17ml (150 ml before surgery). We are making definite progress. Dr. Rouse repeated again that maybe in a couple of days, we could start the tube feedings. He said we could hold him yesterday, but every time the nurse even moved him around for routine stuff he got upset, so we opted to give him a couple of days. If this last pleuradesis works as well as it looks like it is going to, then we should get to hold him every day for the rest of his life (well, until it is "not cool" to get hugs from Mom and Dad - even then, he'll just have to get over it!). We can wait a couple of days for him to be more comfortable. I don't want him to have extra morphine just so he can tolerate being held.

Still going slow on ventilator weaning, to allow him to fully recover from Wednesday's surgery. Other than that, not much else new to report! The boys are coming back up today - they have had a great time at Lincoln this week. We'll enjoy the weekend together, and then Josh is planning to take them back on Monday or Tuesday and go back to work. Gabriel is doing better and better all of the time, and Josh wants to save some of his comp time. They'll come back up on his days off. I miss home and will miss Josh and the boys, but I can't leave Gabriel - especially with such a long drive. I know they are all in good hands, so it makes it much easier to stay here and not worry about them. Hopefully we won't be too many more weeks away from going home ourselves.