Day 63 (Oct 27)

There isn't much news to report today.  Tobias had a calm day and it was similar to yesterday.  He is speaking occasionally, but for the most part he has been exhausted and sleeps through the day.  His heart rate was in the 70s for much of the day, but it has spiked to 110 this evening, which is when he normally starts to storm, if he storms at all.  He seems more rigid in tonight's storming episode, but it isn't dramatically different than yesterday.  It's mild enough that he is sleeping through it so we grant him his peace and don't wake him up by trying to make him more comfortable in our efforts to lower his heart rate.  He was doing so well in the late afternoon that the nurse suggested that we skip his Tylenol dose and we agreed.  Perhaps this is why his storming tonight seems more severe. 

One medically interesting thing did happen today, however.  When Tobias' trache bandage was changed out, we got to see his stoma.  It looks like it has closed, just as we were told it would.  Later in the day I noticed the bandage expanding and contracting slightly with his breathing so it apparently wasn't completely closed.  But it is amazing that his body can close a hole the size of one's pinky in such a short period of time.

There are two small mysteries that Tobias created for us with his injury.  The first one is how to get into his phone.  I'm not sure why this one is important, but Katja would like to have access to his phone and we don't want to risk locking it with a brute force approach to guessing the passcode.  The other mystery has more practical importance because it has to do with his passport, namely, we can't find it.  Tobias is a dual citizen of the US and Germany and he holds two passports.  Neither has been found in his luggage, backpack, books or personal items.  If Tobias' time in the rehab hospital comes to an end by the end of the year and we want to head back to Germany, his passport is going to come in handy.  We could theoretically get a new one by the end of the year, but Tobias isn't exactly ready to pose for an acceptable passport photo or sign his name.  We can probably procure a passport on his behalf, but it's complicated and Germany is known for making even simple bureaucratic things more complicated than necessary.  It would be nice for Tobias to wake up just enough to direct us to his passport and give his mom his phone code.  We've been more hopeful lately since he was started speaking.  Today Katja and I started our informal passport interrogation in the form of a painfully slow game of 20 questions.  We didn't get very far.  We're on question three and we aren't really sure we are getting answers to questions one and two.  He's weak and not able to vocalize so we try to read his lips.  Sometimes it's easy, but often his words are indistinguishable.  He has a habit of make a chewing motion sometimes before he speaks, almost like he is warming up his muscles to deliver the word(s) like an athlete would before trying to hit a baseball or throw a football.  Sometimes it's hard to tell where the warm-up stops and the word(s) begin.  To further complicate our delicate sleuthing process, we don't know whether Tobias can understand complicated questions.  He responds correctly to "Are you hot/cold?" and "Am I your mother?", but "Where did you put your passport?" is a much more difficult question to process.  "What is your phone code?" seems like an easier question to answer, but I prefer to use Tobias' limited question-answering energy on the passport mystery rather than the phone enigma.  Hopefully Tobias is still recovering from the cranioplasty surgery and in a few days he'll have metabolized the anesthesia completely, recovered from the surgery exhaustion and we'll find him sitting up in his bed one morning debating the strengths and weaknesses of the current cultural morality with the nurse.  Maybe then he can tell us where he has hidden his passports and how to get into his phone.  On the odd chance that this doesn't happen, we are starting the process to get a new passport for a presently incapacitated German citizen lying minimally conscious in a foreign country.  It's more practical to enter Germany on a German passport so that no extended visa becomes necessary.

Being a dad and experiencing the joy, responsibility and purpose of fatherhood is the most meaningful thing I've done with my life.  When our children are young they depend on us for everything at first.  As any parent knows, this responsibility can be all-consuming and, at times, overwhelming, but I applied myself willingly and got more in return than I put on the altar.  As our children grow, they need us less and we evolve from being care-givers to being car-givers and then to being empty-nesters.  Our youngest son, Sebastian, flew to the US to prepare for his freshman year in college two weeks before Katja and I, so we were officially empty-nesters for fourteen days.  We maintain loving and caring relationships with our kids, but they just don't need us as much now and it is their time to experience life on their own.  Tobias' injury has reminded me of the fulfillment that comes from being needed as a parent and I've felt a closeness to the memories from when the kids were young and all depended on us for their care.  It has been a silver lining to the dark cloud around us, but this is not the life that I want for Tobias and it isn't the life that I want for Katja and myself.  We believe that we're prepared for whatever comes our way, but we hope that this bitter cup passes soon enough so that Tobias can experience the adventure of life.  He has a lot to offer the world.

Hope over fear.