Baltimore: Day 45 (August 31)

Today started slow and frustrating but turned into the best day we have had since July 22nd. Robbie got his fixator taken out at about 6:00 p.m. and he was in Mom's arms shortly after, smiling and laughing like we remember six weeks ago. To start the day Dr. Sponseller, the orthopedic doctor, came in and had no idea we were planning on taking out the fixator today which confused us because we assumed he was in on the plan. Then in the afternoon Robbie spiked his highest fever of our stay (103 degrees). But all that changed when Dr. Sponseller came in with his wrenches and took the fixator out. I will post pictures of Robbie tomorrow that show what he looked like from Day 1 and what he looks like now. I will also add pictures of those screws.

Now that the fixator is out we are able to pick him up and hold him as long as we want to. He does have to have his legs bandaged together for two weeks with an Ace wrap just to finish the healing, but it feels so good to have him back in our arms. You can tell that he has been in a bed on his back the last six weeks because when we picked him up his poor little neck couldn't hold up his big old head. We knew that his legs would have atrophy but we never thought about the neck. It was like holding a 23 pound newborn baby. We also found out that he has a solid bald spot in the back of his head. We did a little comb-over and you can't even tell it is there, I wish I could do that.

Tomorrow morning they will clamp off the Super Pubis Tube (SP Tube) and see how things are draining. To test that they unclamp the tube every so often and see how much residual urine comes out of the bladder. If that number is low, then the will pull the SP tube because the draining is working correctly. Once that tube is out then we basically just have to make sure that he is eating and drinking and that he has no major infections or fevers. We have a chance of being out of the hospital on Friday if things go well. We still don't know if we have to stick around a few days for checkups, but just to be out of the hospital will be awesome. The light is definitely at the end of the tunnel and we just continue to hope and pray that things go as planned.