Joye's Update 4/11/08

Well, today started off kind of rough. They put Andrew on C-Pap without sedation or pain medication and the goal was for him to breath on his own for 1 hour. He went for only about 20 minutes and was having too many episodes of Apnea which is long periods of time (like 20-25 seconds) between breaths. So, that wasn't great, but at least he got some "exercise" in. They did not sedate him at all today so he was a bit agitated throughout the day with the ventilator and being uncomfortable. I guess that's to be expected though. However, the day has ended on a great note. We had a really good nurse today that was being "sneaky" and was doing a sensation test on him without telling him. In other words, she was poking and pinching him in different places and watching his face to see a natural reaction to the pain. When they do these sensation evaluations, they poke with little pin things, they pinch normally sensitive areas, and they press a hard object like a pen into the beds of fingernails and toe nails which is actually quite painful to anyone who is not paralyzed. Well she poked and pinched for quite a while around his body as he basically laid there watching TV and completely ignoring her, when all of the sudden as she was pressing her pen into the nail bed of one of his fingers on his left hand and he shot a look at her like "what was that?" He actually felt it! He didn't feel it as pain; more like pressure, but we'll take it. The plan for tomorrow is an MRI at 6am to see how his swelling looks, more "exercise" on C-Pap and hopefully more sensation. Well I promised I'd get out of the CCU for a little bit tonight as the nurses are worried I'm not getting out enough, so I'm going to close. They say there is this thing called "CCU-itis" where sometimes family members who spend a lot of time in here start going a little nuts. And, since I'm already nuts, I better listen to them before I make it worse. Good Night and God Bless. Joye