[Kay and the girls (Jessie, Jaime, & Jordyn) got out for a while this morning to Washington DC, toured the capitol building, and stopped in Rep. Petri's office. The Marines gave them a ride (half hour by car) from the hospital to the Capitol. They went to the] "Native American Smithsonian Museum for lunch, and it was very expensive, $65 for four of us. (They were Walking back to the Rayburn Building, the Capitol right in front of them as she talked to me on the phone).
Josh was in surgery this morning. There's a possibility they would be closing his wounds today. That would be pretty exciting! I don't know that for a fact, though. The surgery today is the flushing of the wounds. Every couple of days they open the packed wounds on his legs and flush them out. They want him to bleed [through the open wounds], I'm sure, to rejuvenate new blood cells and to clean out the wounds. They look for infection. They heal better that way. Technically there's no air in [the wounds] and they can get at it and keep checking it and checking it. If there is any other dead tissue in there they can eliminate it so it doesn't cause any infection. Either today is his last surgery, or there might be one more. They do call it surgery because they have to put him out to do this. He may have one more on Friday and then they'll close him up next week. It's been every other day since we've been here. I assume that's how it will continue. Once they've closed his wounds then he can start healing.
They got a back brace for him so he should be out of bed today, so he should be much happier. He's got little stretchy bands [in the bed] that he can pull on [to work out his arms]. He has a slight fracture in the middle lumbar region of his back. It's nothing the doctors are overly concerned with because of his strength and his youth. They think it will heal fine, but he's got a back brace to keep it stable while they are doing physical therapy with him, which he'll be starting possibly today. Usually on a surgery day they don't want to do too much with him just because it takes so much out of him. But if he's up to it, they'll get him up in a wheelchair and get him out of the room.
They are taking us to dinner tonight down to a fancy dining room and giving us a fancy spaghetti supper, so we should all be together, so that should be fun. They are taking us out to a fancy restaurant on Friday night so that's kind of exciting too!
Maybe we'll see Dave's brother tonight for supper (Kay's brother-in-law who lives in Arlington). Dave's talked to him a couple times [since we've been out here]. He works in the basement of the Pentagon for a company that works for the government. We hope to see him soon.
Dave has been able to get to Facebook routinely, but not his Gmail, which has been frustrating for him. Dave wants to get ahold of Channel 2 and the paper [The Fond du Lac Reporter]. Jessie wants to make sure Josh's story gets out."
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