Not much change, Trach cheating, Party planning

Not much change between today & yesterday as far as fever, heart rate, breathing rate, etc. She was asleep most of the time. She managed to figure out how to cheat the tracheostomy... she pulls the collar to one side and can squeeze out a word or two. She's been writing quite a lot over the last day or two, and most of the time we're able to figure out what she's writing. The few hours a day that she's really awake & alert, her writing almost looks normal. They tried the CPAP mode of ventilation again today, but she didn't tolerate it well. It's been weird... one day she can go for a couple hours, the next day only a couple minutes. Her tummy looks a little more bloated today than yesterday, but that might be because the IV feeding is decreasing and the gastro tube feeding is increasing. There was a vomiting episode earlier, soon after administering some meds.
Denise looked at some party supply catalogs tonight and circled some items for me to get for Gracie's birthday party. One of the people at work took digital pictures from the party supply store for me, and I'll show those pics to Denise tomorrow when she has more energy. By the way, thank you for all the offers to help out with that! I'm overwhelmed & will hopefully get back to a bunch of you this weekend.
I went to wash my hands at the sink and my head knocked some chimes that are hanging from the TV set. Thank you to whoever got that for Denise. And while I'm thanking anonymous gift-givers, thank you to whoever left the daddy & baby sculpture & In-n-Out gift certificates on our front porch last week. And somebody got us a Boston Market gift card with no name. I'm sorry about being so bad about writing thank you notes to people... I like to express appreciation, but I'm dropping the "thank you note" ball quite frequently during this ordeal. Know that I truly appreciate all that's been flowing our way. Maybe I should do a post that's dedicated exclusively to thanking everyone... it'd be a long post!