Im battling a tough cold so Shelly, Steve, and Chris met this afternoon with one of the doctors that is on Moms (Sandy Miller) team. They are controlling her pain pretty well; she appears to be resting comfortably. The bleeding in the brain has not increased since the surgery. The rest of the news was not good. Everyone viewed todays CAT scan and saw that her brain is definitely using all the space that was made by removing part of her skull. There is still a significant amount of blood around the clamped area. The pool has not grown, but it has not shrunk either. It is too soon to tell exactly how much brain material was damaged, but it is obvious that the area affected is very large and it is in a very bad spot. Her speech and communications centers are in that area so that is probably why she is only sometimes able to respond to verbal commands. Right now there are only sparks of activity where things like simply squeezing your hand on command are hit-and-miss. With where the damage occurred, she will have significant issues moving the right side of her body, especially her arm - most probably forever. It is hard to tell how much she will be able to process verbal communication ever again. The recent activity where she was fussing with her gown and sheet may have been just instinct/muscle memory. Hopefully she will open her eyes again soon and be able to communicate in some meaningful fashion. Hopefully. She is somewhat breathing on her own, but it is unclear how long that would last without the aid of a machine. The doctor continues to be concerned that she had a seizure right after she arrived at the hospital and is worried that discontinuing that medication may lead to another. As of now, we plan to let her continue to rest through the weekend and then regroup on Mon Dec 1 with more doctors to decide a plan of action based on her status at that point. Choices then involve either doing nothing- leaving in the intubation tube, or remove the intubation tube and put in a tracheotomy tube and a feeding tube and work a schedule where she breathes with and without the tube for 4 hours at a time, or just remove the tube. All of these choices suck. I have been very sick with the funk and cant/shouldn’t go to the hospital. The kids are out of school the entire week as well. Steve is helping out where he can and continues to push off meetings and reschedule things as best he can. Jeannes birthday party went well yesterday. Thanksgiving...TBD... Thank you to everyone that continues to support us with your prayers and offers of help. We are blessed with a large circle of friends. If you feel moved to help, we would appreciate gift certificates to Wendys, Arbys, El Maguey, HyVee, or generic Visa gift cards. It looks like well be eating out a lot in the next few weeks and the kids like those places. Please mail them or drop them off at Steves office at 200 Corporate Lake Drive, Columbia, MO 65203. Or if you could host the kids for a couple of hours, that would be very helpful especially this week. If you would like to show your support to just tell us that youre thinking and praying for our family, it is OK to like this post. Don’t feel obligated to comment.
Posted on: Tue, 25 Nov 2014 03:11:39 +0000
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