Today’s news begins with furniture. Tanja is sitting in a chair! Rather a large, complicated chair, for sure, but a chair nonetheless. She couldn’t have done that yesterday, she’s doing it expertly today, and that dynamic, we hope, will be a theme moving forward.

We got to listen in on rounds this morning. You know on the medical dramas how the young doctor presents and the more senior ones listen carefully and make improving comments and the nurse weighs in with a detail that might have been overlooked and everyone is respectful and positive and just radiating competence? It was exactly like that, just calmer and more thorough, since there was no commercial break to consider.

A good deal of what they discussed was incomprehensible, but they seemed pretty satisfied and the very fact they invited us to listen seemed like a good sign.

The nurse practitioner came in just before noon for a neuro check and Tanja proceeded to show off with some pretty impressive elbow bending and thumb circling. Much spontaneously oohing and aahhing from the NP served to underscore the accuracy of Tanja’s baby metaphor. The progress is tiny but it is very exciting to see.

Appetite is up: mashed strawberries and oatmeal! Sleepiness is constant. All these baby parallels are piling up. I predict this one will be a handful when she stops napping:)

They’ve moved Tanja to a new room with a window and it was lovely to see her with the sun on her face. She’ll be there until Friday which is at the outside of the 3 to 5 days they forecast on Saturday.

But here’s the thing about that—underscoring what total lambs we are. She can’t leave the ICU because the bp-raising meds are ICU meds—they can only be administered in this setting. And the team is administering them for the five day max because they see the drugs are working. So this is good.

But one can easily imagine a situation where you’re out of the ICU in three days, congratulating yourself on the speed of your progress. And the docs shrug and wish you well.

There are so many things we don’t know. And it’s happening all around us.

It is said that every tribe needs optimists. The people who are, like, “let’s go eat that wooly mammoth. It’s big, we’re hungry, let’s go.” But they need the pessimist too. The person who says, “what if it comes at you? Maybe bring a spear?”

We are going with optimism. Not because we don’t understand this situation is bad—we get it. But there is no practical downside to optimism and all sorts of real daily and long-term benefits.

It worked on the mammoths. It’ll work for us:)