Day +109, Our hero!

Hey everyone! Just wanted to do a quick update. To be honest, mostly so you could see these pictures. Don went through an old box of photos the other day and came across these. He thought they were pretty fitting. Charles is our hero, after all.

Look at this guy!



These photos are from when he was 3 or 4 years old. Hopefully we can recreate these pictures sometime soon once Charles is standing on his own and I can sew him a larger Robin costume.

Charles has been doing really well lately. His gut is really healing up! He hasn't had much stomach cramping these days and has been drinking Gatorade the last couple days without problems. Today he was also told he is no longer NPO! Don and Charles' brother Jon visited tonight and took him on a wheel chair ride, and he even got a latte! Charles has been talking about coffee for WEEKS and with his powers of pursuasion was able to convince his nurse to let him get a decaf soy latte. He was pretty pleased about that. :)

One small setback has been that Charles was having some troubles with his left eye being irritated again. The eye doctors have seen him a few times now and it turns out he has what they were originally calling an ulcer, but now are calling a "filament" on his eye. Part of his eye had gotten really dry and caused a little spot on the surface of his eye to kind of break open. It's very very tiny and just looks like a little tiny white spot to me.

The doctor did his best to make it lay as flat as possible and they gave Charles an oversized contact to put in that will help protect it. They said this problem is common with people who don't close their eyes all the way when they blink, but I told them I've witnessed Charles sleeping with his eyes a little bit open several times since he's been here! So now we know the problem is that he's been sleeping with his eyes cracked open and that little spot of his eye has been getting dried out. Tonight they're going to try putting ointment in his eye and actually taping his eye shut! Kind of weird, but hopefully it will help him heal up.

Charles is going to continue to take it easy as far as drinking, and I think he'll be getting a menu tomorrow now that he's no longer NPO, but he still needs to take it really easy on his stomach. He's also been working on getting his strength back up again, and is really being a trooper.

He's resting well right now and I think he'll be getting into bed soon.

Love you all,
Karlin