He's baaaaack!

Back "on the floor," that is.  Yes, Ayden took one more step on his (new) road to recovery today by moving out of the PCCU.  This is two weeks to the day after he went into arrest.  Said another way, that's two weeks to the day from when we could have lost him.  This is, of course, great news.  Ayden has once again shown his strength and resiliency (undoubtedly, he had some help in that department from The Man Upstairs this time around).

Still, he is not back to where he was.  As Allison has already related today, he pretty much bombed yesterday's swallow study.  Because he did not show the ability to cough when formula went down the wrong way, we can't work with him on his eating like we were able to the first time around.  We will just have to hope that everything starts to get stronger and to come back on its own between now and the next study.  In addition to the swallowing issue, Ayden has also not yet fully regained his voice.  While he is able to make some sounds like he was before, his cry is still silent.  His face turns red, his mouth opens, but nothing really comes out, other than a pitiful, wheeze-like sound.  It is almost as if the actual act of trying to cry hurts right now.

It is likely these two issues are related.  The intubation may have caused some temporary paralysis to his vocal chords.  There could also be some residual swelling or inflammation that has not yet healed.  Another possibility is the placement of one of the cannulas had some effect on the laryngeal nerve, part of which is in pretty close quarters with the aorta.  Whatever the cause, partial paralysis in these situations are relatively common (it was a pleasant surprise Ayden had none of these issues after his surgery).  Permanent paralysis is possible, but considerably more rare.  Because he is able to make various noises, I'm hopeful this is an issue which will rectify itself over time, whether it takes a week or a month.

At any rate, God has again still been very good to us.  Our baby boy is back on the floor (which means he's back with all of his girlfriends), so he's probably pretty happy right now.  It may take a few days for him to get over not having any food in his stomach, but given where he was 14 days ago, we'll gladly deal with that.

Although I'm sure it didn't always seem like we felt this way, we are so thankful for all of the care he received from the PCCU team over the last two weeks.  As a group, they worked very hard to get us our son back.  They did an amazing job.  If not for them, I wouldn't be able to post pictures like these (that's Frank, Ayden's new Wubbanub, resting on his chest):