Roller coaster ride begins

The best thing we can do for our sanity is to accept the present situation as is. Sometimes that is easy, such as when we're bed-ridden at home with a fever but resting comfortably on the sofa with a handful of movies. Other times it is not so easy, as when we're stuck in traffic or at an airport with a dead phone and no snack.

Steve finds himself in more of the latter situation these days, begging Marian to get him out of entubation. He has done a much better job of battling his fever, although some inflammation still persists in his lungs. The docs says his lungs require a little more oxygen, so they are going to move him into isolation to ensure that he doesn't contract any more virus/bug that might slow the recovery process. The cultures taken from both bronchoscopies are "negative," which means that no new pathogens are in the lungs. However, they still don't have a conclusive reason for his recent spike in temperature. Most likely he was just all hot and bothered by the tubes, although some bug might have caused the pneumonia.

UPDATE at 1:45pm
The fever has gone down but his oxygen pressure (PEEP) has also gone down, meaning they needed to increase his O2 intake to 80%, up from 40% yesterday. The docs think that his left lung is much more inflamed than his right. They are increasing steroids to reduce this inflammation, which is the last step before the tracheotomy.