Saturday 18Jan

Today's update is a bit more lacking, but I'm here and so I'll send what I can. 😊

Brian's a bit more tired it seems today, he's moving a bit less and just seems like he is in a deeper sleep. I know I have said it in here before, but this is all very normal with brain injuries. One of his trauma PAs came in and said he still looks like he is improving and as long as the overall trend is upwards, that is excellent. He also said if someone asked today he would say Brian is ready for the LTAC, so that is positive news also. He will likely still be here until early-mid next week just with it being a holiday weekend, the logistics are a bit harder to work out, but I would say most likely be the end of this week he will be in the LTAC. 

Brian is still having a bit of neuro storming which is just that phenomenon that happens in neuro patients. It is kinda like if your brain overreacts to its own healing and causes other weird things to happen. With Brian it seems to be causing his breathing rate to increase, sometimes his heart rate and blood pressure, and it also can cause a fever. Brian's had a low grade fever nearly his entire hospital stay so it could be the neuro storming and it could also be a potential small infection. They are closely monitoring Brian's fever as well as his white blood cell count and any other indications of infection. They might put him on an antibiotic as a precaution, but they also may not. 

I don't know if I ever updated on Brian's tongue (if I did already and you don't want to read it again, skip this paragraph 👅). He bit his tongue at some point when he had the previous ventilator. It is common in neuro patients (and I would think everyone) to want to bite foreign objects in their mouths. Brian, unfortunately, managed to accidentally bite around the vent and the bite block and bit his tongue hard. There wasn't anything they could do to address it until after his trach surgery. The trauma team was able to perform a bit of a bedside surgery to remove the necrotic tissue and they had to remove a decent sized piece of his tongue (sorry, I know this is so gross). There was really no other option though since he couldn't keep that necrotic tissue on his tongue. The surgeon did an amazing job making sure everything was all cleaned out and treated and it is now healing up nicely.

As always, just more waiting we are staring to approach that 14 day mark, so hopefully he wakes up by then, but even if he does not, that is okay and we will keep waiting for him. He is showing such good signs of healing. I also wanted to say we have really felt all the support from everyone around and we are eternally grateful to everyone! 

🤍