SamBeller.org
Welcome to Sam's New Web Site! We will continue to add more news and neat stuff, but in the meantime there's lots to check out--including recent photos of Sam, the full archive of journal entries dating back to 2000 when the site originally launched, and links to resources for families with special-needs children. You can also send a message using the contact page, submit comments on your favorite entries, and join the e-mail list to be notified of special Sam news!
Sunday, August 19, 2001
Sam Still Recovering--Thank You for Your Prayers
Hi Gang,
Thanks much for your prayers for Sam. We really appreciate that… 
We’ve had 3 nights of nurses. We’ve really needed the 24-hour care because he has a lot of drainage from the surgery. And still some discomfort - so he’s not trying to swallow. So, he’s had junky sounding lungs and breathing. So, we’ve been doing breathing treatments every 2-4 hours (with our IPV machine which does percussion as it does the medicine misting). We had a great night nurse and our regular nurses during the day. So, the care has been good. We’re hoping for a good day today so that David and I won’t have to do too many treatments tonight or the next night!
The doctor seems to think that it’ll take another 10 days or so for the swelling and discomfort to really go away. Then a couple weeks of playing around with medication and what-not. So, it may be about 3 more weeks before we can really determine how much this surgery helped Sam. We hope that we’ll be suctioning him much less in the future and that his lungs will be at a reduced risk for aspiration pneumonia. We’ll keep you posted on the overall success.
We are still watching and waiting to see if Sam’s facial nerves came through okay. The both sides look the same when he smiles. However, only his left side goes down when he frowns. The right is still looking “lazy”. The surgeon was very surprised and concerned. He seemed to doubt that it would be damaged since he felt it all went so well. He said that it’s possible that the nerve got stretched when they had to move it out of the way during the surgery. He said to give it a week or so to see if it’s permanent. However, it hasn’t changed in the four days since surgery - so that may indicate a permanent state - but we can hope! It’s very slight and most people won’t notice it. We still want it to go away - because we don’t want any of his facial expressions to change!
The army of angels helping with the other kids was great. We had meals brought to the house by church and family - was awesome!
School starts Tuesday and we feel very unprepared!! Sam will wait a week or so to go - until all swelling is gone. Tevah will start this week and Jacob next week at preschool.
Thanks for everyone’s love and prayers,
Kelly, David, Sam and gang
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