Wednesday, April 11, 2007

Jacob's 4/10 status report

Thank you all for your continued support! Jacob has the prayers of so many people and so many faiths behind him.

Last night we had a little failure of faith. Maybe one we lost the support of one of the more obscure religions (I knew I didn't trust those druids). For the last few days following thursday's brain MRI, Jacob has been unable to move his left arm or left leg. The neurologist hadn't been around for a few days, and his partner handled the rounds at 10:00 pm last night. Her consult strongly implied that Jacob has serious neurological deficiences. During her examination, Jacob was knocked out cold and was unable to open his eyes or respond in any way. I explained that he (1) had 8 mgs of morphine in his system yesterday, (2) that he's on dialysis and a respirator and is therefore kind of weak, and (3) that he's been lucid on the limited occasions when he wakes up. No matter -- she decided there were very serious long term issues. To comfort us, she told us that she had a patient just like this and "he got better. He's not very smart, and is in special ed., but he can walk".

The next 10 hours were, objectively, the worst 10 hours of my life (not that this is about me...) Since he had his last morphine at 5:30 p.m, I figured that he'd wake up any second and recognize me and squeeze my hand (even if just from his right side) and I'd know I wasn't crazy. We cut off the morphine and waited. And Waited. And Waited. (At this point you can go get a snack. I'll wait . . )

He didn't wake up until 7:45 am. When he did, he opened his eyes, mouthed "I want mommy. My tummy hurts", and we watched Pokemon for 30 minutes. The pain was so much that we put him back on morphine. Until he fell asleep we read to him (he picked the book). I called my wife, called my mom, threw up, and went on with my day.

He just came back from MRI and they said that his brain is much improved since last thursday. He squeezed the doctor's hand with both his left hand and his right hand. I crawled out of my resting place (in the fetal position under the desk) and started typing.

His kidney function isn't back yet. They are trying to take off the respirator some time tomorrow (he doesn't really need it now). White blood cell count is down to 39,000. Silly little details.

We'll keep you posted. Meanwhile, we're going to go make up with the druids.

No comments: