Sunday July 25th

The pulmonary dr. came in at 10am and did a laryngectomy. There was no swelling and removed the tube and woke him up.

Steve was groggy, but glad to get the tube out. He was able to have a liquid dinner. They wanted to make sure the feeding tube was working so they hooked up the feeding solution and that did work, though Steve told everyone that would listen that that was going to be used as a last resort.

Here's a bit of our conversation after the tube was out. Since Steve's voice was raspy, I had to get close to hear.
S - "you look tired," M - "I am, I've only been sleeping 3-4 hrs a night" S- "Sit down", I sit down. S - starts talking. I get up; S- "Could I have some ice chips", give him ice chips, I sit down. S- looks at the tv and frowns. M- "do you want a different station"? S- nods. The control wasn't hooked up to his bed, so I get up and go through the channels put on WGN. I go to sit down. Steve starts talking. I get up. S- "could I have more ice chips?" I get him more ice chips....and so on and so on.