I don’t know if anyone cares to hear my wife’s armchair diagnosis as a medical speech therapist, but she works with a lot of patients in similar predicaments. She can tell Jim is trached (that’s the safety strap going around his neck) for breathing, which is OK, because they don’t want to mess around with his mouth’s healing process right now by sticking a tube down his throat. She’s also pretty sure that’s a brand new feeding tube hanging off to the side of his face. That’s good news if they’ve moved to that from the peg tube that goes into the side of your gut.
Most people can probably guess why the family isn’t showing Jim’s face right now. He’s bound to still be pretty swollen, bruised and just generally jacked up. Plus the tracheostomy. I think this is a nice, intimate, but still respectful way they’ve chosen to document Jim’s recovery in these immediate days.
So still a long road ahead, but this is all good progress. Especially him being up and moving with the procedure they had to do on his leg (you can see the bandages on his left leg) to reconstruct his upper jaw.
Much love to the Kellys!