Joye's Update 4/17/08

Praise the Lord . . . that's all I have to say. Andrew moved his arm twice today and squeezed a nurses hand during his surgery. During his surgery to receive the trach, Andrew picked his entire arm up and moved it open as though he was stretching. The people present in the O.R., who witnessed this strongly agree that it appeared to be a purposeful move, not a reflex. Also during the surgery, a nurse was holding his hand that had the IV in it to keep it stable and she said he squeezed her hand quite firmly. Then, when he was returned to his CCU room the nurses and respitory technicians saw him pick his arm up and lay it down on his upper thigh. When I walked in the room they were all smiles and some with tears of joy. God is touching Andrew with his healing hand, I just know it. Later in the day, he was able to receive his new feeding tube . . . and that went well too. He's sleeping comfortably; ocassionally he'll wake up and will feel how raw his throat is and I know from the look on his face that he's in a lot of pain. I guess he'll be in that pain for a couple of days though. From what I understand, we will only have a week or even less here and he will be going to rehab to get off the ventilator. I'm going to begin touring the rehab hospitals as soon as tomorrow to find him the best there is to offer. I've spoken to a lot of the neuro nurses here and have some good information to go on. These nurses have to come to love Andrew and want him to go to the best place.

Joye's Update 4/16/08

All was pretty quiet today; Andrew basically just rested up for his surgery tomorrow. We're still, of course, praying he will be able to breath on his on before the surgery to avoid going in again . . . so please continue to pray and maybe he won't have to go through that. The surgery is scheduled for 11:30am. Either way, he will be so happy to be able to speak again soon. I was informed today that once he's recovered from this surgery he will be able to be transferred to a rehabilitation hospital to begin rehab to get completely off the ventilator. Once that's accomplished, then he will go to yet another rehabilitation hospital that specializes in spinal cord injuries. It's going to be a long road to recovery, but he's committed (and so am I) 100% to getting him healthy again. Andrew's resting quite comfortably tonight, and is enjoying the Suns game. He's still keeping his humor about him and he's not wavered in his faith that he'll pull through this. As always, I'm so very proud. Anything is possible though God. Good night and God bless. Joye

Joye's Update 4/15/08

Today was pretty quiet. Andrew did a lot of sleeping. He finally woke up and was pretty alert at about 6pm. I was able to catch him up on all of your posts and we were able to pray together. It's so evident to me that Andrew's faith in God's healing power is pulling him through this. It has been decided that he will receive the tracheotomy on Thursday at 11:30am. Please pray for that surgery to go well. It's not a terribly difficult surgery; however, because of his neck fusion surgery, they are not able to extend the neck as they would normally like to do for this surgery. It makes it a little more tricky, but they still say it's not too difficult. Later that day he will also have a feeding tube put through his belly. He is unable to eat with the trach for now, so that's how he'll receive nutrients. He's still doing great emotionally, and he's still has me saying the alphabet about 100 times per day. It gets a little comical when he has just received his morphine and is trying to spell out words for me. He's not such a good speller then. He also got some new snazzy boots. They are lined with fur and they make it so his legs don't turn out and so he doesn't develop this thing called "drop foot." When we showed them to him he made me play the alphabet game and he spelled out H-U-G-G-S. I was so happy he wanted me to hug him, then I realized he meant Ugs. He was telling me his new boots were his Ugs (those fury boots the girls are wearing lately). He keeps the nurses laughing around here . . . they all love him. Well, I think I'll close for now . . . Andrew is still very alert and wants to "talk" some more tonight. He is really loving your posts. He made me spell out E-M-A-I-L today which meant he was asking me to read his posts. Thank you so much for that. Good night and God Bless. Joye

Prayer works . . . we had a better day today. Actually, the night last night (after I posted) was good. Andrew was able to sleep and his breathing pattern changed dramatically. You see . . . the ventilator that Andrew breaths with is programmed with many settings (most I could not tell you anything about), but some I've sort of become educated on. There are settings for how much oxygen he gets, how many breaths per minute he will receive and how much volume he will get it at (that's about all I know). When something happens outside those settings, then alarms will go off that sound like a horn. Well, all night long his horn was going off because he was breathing against the ventilator. This is actually a good thing, although at first it scared me (these alarms are so stressful) because he has enough of his own volume to set the alarms off when he breaths one direction and the ventilator is pushing air in another direction (I hope I'm explaining this well). So anyways . . . last night was encouraging. This morning they gave him another test to see if he was able to come off the ventilator and he still is unable to do so, but he's doing better. If he is still unable to test well enough to come off the vent by Thursday then they will have to do a tracheotomy which is a procedure on the neck to open a direct airway through an incision in the trachea (windpipe). This will be much more comfortable for him and he will soon be able to talk with it . . . no more tube down his throat. Once he's better and doesn't require the ventilator, then it can be removed and no damage is done with exception of a small scar. But, we still have 3 days to get him off the ventilator completely. They did a scan of his lungs to make sure there is no large areas of fluid and we will have the results to that in the morning. One thing that came as a result of that test sort of happened by mistake (but turned out to be a good thing) was when he returned from the scan, he arrived at the same time 2 new CCU patients came in. This made it difficult to get him set up right away and he went over the amount of time he should have without pain meds or this medicine called Propofol. Propofol is given to most all patients that have a tube in their throat to help them relax and not constantly gag on it. They turn the amount given to him up and down all the time to sedate him and take him out of sedation for assessments, etc. Well, without this medicine the tube can be very painful and it makes the patient so aware of it that they will gag like crazy. A couple of days ago, they took Andrew down to nothing with that medicine and actually stuck a stick thing to the back of his throat and he didn't gag at all. Well, today while waiting for his medicine he starting gagging uncontrollably. It wasn't nice to watch, but we were all (including him) so happy he was doing it. So, I truly believe things are just slowly "waking up." We just need to keep praying and I know this is all going to turn out good. Andrew is in pretty good spirits tonight. He's comfortable and he's watching the Suns. Thank you all again for all your posts . . . it always brightens him up when I read them to him. We both feel so blessed to have so many friends and family members out there fighting this fight with us. We could not do this without you. God Bless you all. Joye

I hate to report that today was another rough one, but it kind of was. Andrew did not sleep at all last night and not much today until about 3pm. They finally had to sedate him to get him to sleep. He's quite agitated and he's had a pretty high fever today. He does have a "normal" infection due to having a catheter and has strong antibiotics for that. Visitors are completely restricted now due to that and we now have to wear gloves and those paper gown things for our own protection rather than his. It will be this way until that passes. They are really trying hard to get him off the ventilator by Thursday or Friday at the latest. I'm told he can't be on the vent for more than 14 days. Due to his state of agitation and lack of rest, they did not assess his senses today, so I don't have news there. He seems to have slipped a little and it's just so vital that we continue lifting him in prayer. Thank you all for your thoughts and prayers . . . that will see us through this. Let's pray for a better day tomorrow (one day at a time). Good night and God Bless. Joye

Joye's Update 4/12/08

Hi all. . . today was a little better than yesterday with regard to Andrew's breathing. Without pain medication or sedation, Andrew was able to breath for 1.5 hours on C-Pap. It's going to take some practice to learn to breath like this, but he's doing great. The MRI results showed the top part of the spine (C1 & C2) to have less swelling, but still a lot of swelling in C3-C6 still remains. Which, again, is not a bad thing as this gives us much hope that more feeling and movement will come as those areas become less swollen. We have perfected our more advanced method for communication called "the alphabet game." He spells words by having me go through the alphabet and I stop on whichever letter he blinks hard on. It's pretty effective; and not as time consuming as you might think; he has me running all over the place getting him blankets, washing his face, and getting the nurse for pain meds or suction. Sometimes he has me put his bed up and then he doesn't like that so we go down a little and then by the time we're done he's exactly in the same place he started; but that's okay, I'll do whatever he wants to make him feel better. He is also now able to have his neck brace off, if he wishes. The neurosurgeon took it off today and Andrew decided he liked the support of just having the back part of the brace on as it makes his neck feel more secure. I received the posters that those of you at his workplace signed and quite a few cards have come in to my sisters mail box. Those cards and messages were read to him and he was so happy to hear from everyone. We are praying all the time and his faith is still strong as ever. He's so determined to get out of this bed and it shows all over his face. He's resting when he's supposed to be and he's working hard when he's supposed to be. His discipline and focus are quite impressive; I'm so proud of him. Thank you all for keeping him in your prayers, it means the world to us both. Good night. God Bless. Joye

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