Day 60 (Oct 24)

The post-surgery face arrived one day late for Tobias.  I remarked yesterday how surprised I was that Tobias looked so good after his cranioplasty, but it only took a day for the swelling to find the right side of his face.  His right eye is swollen shut and looks like he got into a scuffle with whoever fought Rocky Balboa in pretty much any of the Rocky franchise movies.  It isn't as puffy as the first round of procedures, but it will take some time to deflate.  His forehead and top-right side of his face is a bruised reddish color the shape of a boxing glove punch to the side of his face.  The white bandage has been removed as well, revealing a row of tightly spaced staples along the entire incision that starts at the top right center of his head near his hairline and continues down the center line of his head offset a good inch to Tobias' right side.  The incision continues to the back of his head to just above ear level before turning back in a smooth arc to head forward where it passed just above his ear.  The last turn of the incision dips downward immediately in front of his ear and looks as if it is following the contour of his sideburn for an inch.  The hair was shaved along the incision line and, depending on the angle, reminds me, probably erroneously, of a North Korean haircut.  From most angles, however, Tobias looks very much like the old Tobias and his body has shown an envious ability to recover from the physical impacts of his injury and subsequent operations.

When Katja and I checked in at the nursing station today, the nurse mentioned that Tobias is scheduled to return to the rehabilitation hospital at 1pm today.  This is good news that Tobias has recovered so quickly and will get to return to the care of the rehabilitation doctors and therapists so soon.

Fast forward a few hours...

Surprise! The hospital actually transferred Tobias back to the rehab hospital at 12:45.  I was sure that it would be later, but the hospital is keeping me on my toes and guessing.  Tobias didn't look as good as yesterday, but he had a great day.  His heart rate was in the 70s and 80s and he slept through the day until the late afternoon.  Tobias' rehab doctor was on call this weekend and so he dropped in to check on Tobias.  He confirmed that Tobias will start rehab therapies tomorrow like normal.  It's incredible that he just had the top of his skull reattached and two days later he's back to his previous rehab schedule.  He was able to respond a few times today, but most of the time he's just not there.  His right eye was open in the late afternoon (his left eye is swollen shut) and it looks like he is alert, but most of the time he just doesn't respond.  It's confusing to us whether he is just tired and unable to muster his ability to speak or whether his brain is confused and can't understand us.  We keep trying and get overly excited when he does respond.  We are hopeful that he'll be more responsive now that his brain is back in its old environment.  Now that he has been through the cranioplasty, there is no need to keep the trache for a future procedure and we hope that his throat will be free of the trache obstruction sometime this week.

Hope over fear.