Dad is still having his breathing assisted by the ventilator. For most of the day he was still sedated and unconscious, as he has been since before he arrived at Baptist East on Tuesday, but they are trying to reduce his sedation and wake him up. Last night, they did this by completely stopping the sedative, but Dad would get agitated and have tremors when he became conscious. Sounds like they tried this approach multiple times. Then today, we had a excellent nurse who began tapering the sedative. This evening, dad began twitching and opening his eyes. At about 8 PM, while we were not in his room, the nurse got dad to respond to a couple of commands, such as squeezing his hand. Throughout the day, Dad didn't respond negatively to being woken up gradually. The nurse said earlier this evening that they had cut his sedattive to less than half what it had been. I met his nurse for tonight and I thought she seemed like she's on the ball and well infomed about what's going on.
Dad's vitals are all looking good according to the nurse. but he is still pretty swollen in his hands and legs. They're giving him Lasix to try to reduce the swelling. Also since my last post, they did xrays on Dad's back and confirmed that he has a compressed disk (compressed vertebrae?), and that he has a couple of small fractures in his spine, I think due to osteoporosis. The neurologist that read his xrays indicated on Dad's chart that Dad isn't a candidate for surgery. To my knowledge, the only treatment option they see is pain killers. I hope we'll be getting other opinions on this.
It's about 10:30 ET and we just heard from Robin at the hospital. He's waking up more and doing ok so far. Hopefully the trend will continue.
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