Update Monday AM: Thank you for your kind thoughts and prayers. They are working. Chip is off the ventilator, breathing on his own, and resting comfortably. He was not speaking, but is responding to commands.

Friday night, Chip fell onto a concrete floor, sustaining a basilar skull fracture and a frontal lobe brain injury. He is in MSICU at Winchester Medical Center.

As of Sunday night, he remains sedated and on a ventilator. The active bleed has stopped and there is some reduction in the swelling. They bring him out of sedation hourly for a neuro check, where he “reacts appropriately” – fights the breathing tube, displays symmetrical movement, responds to light and pain. He is being weaned from the vent, and continues to breathe over the machine, so we are hopeful that they will be able to remove the tube tomorrow.

The nurses are encouraged that he seems to have an awareness of the difference in our presence and that of strangers. Huh? For my medical friends, his bp and heart rate increase slightly when we speak to him. There is no “sign of agitation.” When he becomes aware of “strangers,” his foot makes little circles under the sheet and his breathing gets faster.

He has been spiking fevers today, but is responding to Tylenol. Antibiotics have been started. They are still uncertain whether this is indicative of aspiration pneumonia or his body’s way of reacting to the “foreign” fluids in his skull.

Please join us in a prayer of thanksgiving that his injuries are no worse than they are and that he continues to show improvement of the coming days and weeks. Also, please keep the wonderful medical staff in your thoughts and prayers – Chip’s life is literally in their hands, and God must work through them.