Dad remained stable throughout the night. Because of the intubation, he needed to remain sedated. This sedation made the hourly neural tests impossible. The doctors needed a way to monitor the bleeding and pressure in his brain. To do this, they inserted a sensor into his skull that gave a reading of the internal pressure. The initial readings were less than half of the value that doctors look for when they feel concern. It was a wonderful indication that dad's bleeding was slow and had not been a threat during his sedation to that point.
Dad was over-breathing the ventilation machine, which is a fantastic sign. The machine was not breathing for him, as he was initializing his own breaths. He was receiving added oxygen, but the doctors were able to reduce the assistance from the initial 100% down to 55% assistance.
The short term plan for dad, in the best case scenario, is to leave the intubation in place and slowly reduce the blood pressure medication as he learns to self-regulate. Once he maintains his own blood pressure and continues initializing his own breathing with reduced assistance, they will take him in for surgery where they will fuse his T3 through T5. Once this is complete, they will remove the intubation and end the sedation.
Mom's surgery went well. She continued to recover and was kept hospitalized for the full day. She was too dizzy to stand on the first day, but was progressing as doctors had hoped.
No comments:
Post a Comment