Day 640 - Feb 28, 2010

Kevin pretty much slept all day today. He did wake up long enough for a few visitors - a group from Operation Military Embrace came to visit all of the wounded warriors and my cousin Elizabeth and her husband Jake came down from Ft. Hood today too.

Kevin really wasn't in a great mood though. I don't know if he just didn't feel well or if he was just tired. We'll see what he's like tomorrow.

My sister also flew home tonight. It was nice having her here and it gave me a chance to run some errands while she stayed with Kevin for a bit yesterday. It was definitely a whirlwind trip though. And it sure was nice of her to bring us my car. Thanks, Kim!

So a couple of you were wondering why we would need to be in TX the better part of 2010. Let's see...we need to be on IV antibiotics for 6-12 weeks. While we are on them we need to have labs done during that period to test for the MRSA, meaning we need to be here at our neurosurgeon's office. We also have to meet with our plastic surgeon because Kevin doesn't have enough skin on his head to have the plate put back in. There just isn't enough to cover it and what is there isn't all that healthy due to the burns. I have been told prematurely that there are two options for this. The first is basically a graft, but this means Kevin won't be able to grow any hair. I can't even begin to tell you how devastated this will make Kevin. Truthfully, I fear he will give up totally if this ends up being our only option. The second possibility is to have a 'balloon' type implant placed under his scalp and (don't ask me how) it gets 'blown up', stretching the skin little by little. I don't know how long for sure that this takes, but it's at least a month and the surgeon that mentioned it told us he wouldn't do it for at least 6 months after this last surgery to remove the plate.

There may be some time in between the third and the six month for us to go back to FL, but honestly - I just don't feel comfortable being there for any real length of time without him having a plate in. If something should happen, I don't know where I would take him, kwim? It's just such a scary thing to not have a neurosurgeon on hand. I had been so petrified for the month or so leading up to us coming here and I don't think I can do that again.

We also need to have some other surgeries to fix some things and we are hoping to have Botox in his hand this week. This will require some therapy after the fact and it's an awful lot of paperwork to go back and forth to different places for therapy - not to mention the expense of traveling from FL to TX all the time.

And we can't forget that we want to detox Kevin at some point and I also still want to send him to that TBI facility. That's here in Texas too.

Wow. I am only touching the tip of the iceberg here. I can't see all this happening over the next year, so some of it may end up being through 2011. Especially because I can pretty much guarantee that some unforeseen emergencies will pop up. Yep, I can pretty much guarantee it...