Matthew with his new breathing apparatus.

There was a great comic strip called Calvin and Hobbes. Calvin was a young, precoscious boy. One Sunday Calvin had a bubble blower. He pulls out the wand, blows a bubble which quickly pops, then looks toward the reader unimpressed and says, �Wee�. That is what it was like today when Matthew came off BiPAP and switched to CPAP. Very Uneventful. Terri and I were happy with the absence of drama. His new apparatus may still look like something out of �A Clockwork Orange� but it opens his whole face to the air and thus, is much better for his skin. An ear nose and throat doctor came in to examine the black thrush spot on the roof of his mouth. He removed the scab with a pair of tweezers so that it wouldn�t fall off and choke Matthew. Vicky, the senior Respiratory Therapist, gave Matthew his back massage treatment today and suctioned out of big piece of goop from his mouth afterwards. She said that the CPAP blows heated & humidified air into his nasal passages and may help to break up more mucous in his airways.
While removing the Spam from our Blog this afternoon at Starbucks a Middle Eastern man named Onjon noticed the hospital button on my shirt and introduced himself. He told me that his wife, Bev, found out 3 years ago during her pregnancy that she had an autoimmune disease. Her body was allergic to a hormone produced during pregnancy. Their son, Arion, was born three months premature and was in the hospital for three months as a result. We commiserated for awhile and then he told me to tell Terri that everything will be OK. He said to take home every machine with a bell or whistle if it makes Terri feel better because her emotional state may be very fragile. When he got up to leave he patted me on the back and said it would all work out. In a 20 minute conversation he made it clear, man to man, that he knew exactly what I was going through. I felt completely recharged.