Saturday hospital report

My apologies to those wanting art related things. My family is still engulfed in my brother’s health struggle and this blog is one way to keep in touch with loved ones around the world.

Positive things on Saturday: Tom was experiencing more eye movement and actual eye closing. He is still having “cough/gaspings” with the ventilator tube and stomach tubes in place. This continues to indicate no damage to the brain stem. Dave brushed Tom’s cheek with his fingers and his eyes widened and he moved his head towards Dave’s hand. We don’t know if it really was a reaction to Dave’s touch, but it was something.

We are in a waiting game right now: The doctors didn’t raise his body temperature to normal yet. That might happen Sunday. He is continuing to battle a fever but blood and sputum  cultures were negative. His dialysis tubes were malfunctioning and they were going to replace it sometime Saturday. His kidney function remains poor, hence the continued dialysis. He was removed from pain medications to see if that would bring him out of the induced coma, but it hadn’t worked as of 1pm on Saturday. His eyes may be moving but are not focused on any one thing. He does not respond to commands from staff to squeeze their hand. They have lessened the sedation by a bunch.

Dave took Amee back to the airport and she is now winging her way home to New Zealand. While waiting at LAX, she spent more time doing research on pancreatitis. Since she is a physicians assistant, she has some additional medical research abilities.  Here is what she wrote: ” I’ve had some time on my hands at LAX, and finally got around to researching more about pancreatitis. And I’m back to feeling optimistic. I think you were in the room when I asked the nurse about his infection…It sounds like he may have had the pancreatitis for a couple of weeks, before it got so bad that he had to get help. If that’s the case, part of the pancreas can necrotize and cause infection. It can take up to FOUR weeks of antibiotics to cure the infection. If there are signs of infection longer than 4 weeks, they usually go in and aspirate the pancreas to send it for a culture to make sure the antibiotics are correct.”

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I was so optimistic heading into Saturday morning. I just knew he would be awake when Amee and Dave visited. I started receiving the disappointing news while at the Open Studio tour and had a minor break down when a friend happened to show up. I was glad to see another friendly face and then an on slot of friends started showing up. It’s not easy to keep your composure as happy people are coming to the studio. Only one day left. Hopefully I can keep the waterworks in check.