{Karlton Bontrager}

Good news! Karlton “graduated” out of the ICU yesterday. His breathing stabilized enough for him to go to the High Dependency Unit (HDU). They moved him about 2:00p in the afternoon.

Yesterday morning, while I was emailing updates, Choy (his mom) and the nurse washed his hair. The staff have been great about shaving him too. He looked really spiffy.

We’ve made friends with another couple whose 40+ year old son is also in the unit . . . for the 2nd time! 20 years ago he was in an accident and fully recovered. But recently he was mugged, and he’s back again. The point of telling you this is that we compare notes from time to time about our sons’ progress. They said that from across the room in ICU they can detect Karlton’s nodding his head as we speak to him. That’s really encouraging!

After the move yesterday afternoon, three friends from Queenstown stopped in and stayed quite a while. Later, Sam, a Dunedin friend, came too. Two of the friends from Queenstown were going to stay at his place for the night. He’d been out shopping for blankets at a thrift shop. When he mentioned that he needed the blankets because of his friend’s snowboarding accident, the people in the shop insisted that he take the blankets without paying for them. They wanted to give him some money too. People over here are so good!

Talked to the people in charge of Karlton’s health insurance. They will pay for our lodging. They will also pay for a round-trip ticket for one of us. Thank goodness he subscribed to a generous health plan!

Things have been a wee bit less comforting this morning. Karlton seemed to have rested well over the night, but he got into breathing distress about 8:00a. Fluid had accumulated in his left lung. Though the nursing staff suction his trach and get him to cough at intervals, they’re less able to clear the left side, and he has less control there too. The machines indicated that he was getting lower percentages of oxygen, and his heart rate kept climbing. The final decision was to return him to ICU for the morning. The nurses assured us that we didn’t have to move all of his things because he’d be returning to HDU in the afternoon. We certainly hope so.

He’s made so many giant strides forward that we shouldn’t be discouraged by a baby step backwards. We’re convinced that he’s in great hands here. We’ll just have to hold on tight. Your continued prayers, positive thoughts, and best wishes are always appreciated. We have also been getting many messages forwarded from the website and promise to read them all to him.

The ICU freely let us use a CD player. The HDU, on the other hand, doesn’t have one. So we plan to buy him a Discman today so that once he returns to HDU he can continue listening to his music.