Day 10 - December 31, 2012

Today Aubrey is writing.

Today has been a day of ups and downs. We spent the day sitting with dad trying to keep him calm and rested. Our goal has not been to get him to follow commands but to get him calm enough to reduce his sedation. He was very very active today. Nathan spent a large part of the day back with dad simply forcing him to lay down. Dad would sit up, kick, make fists, thrash around, roll around. He has been the most active I have seen him. At one point when I was in the room with dad alone, he curled up sideways in the bed and got his head stuck between the guard rales. I couldn't get him unstuck so I had to have nurses come in. It ended up taking 4 nurses to restrain dad because he is so strong.

For most of the day dad's eyes were open, he was still not tracking but we saw a lot of eye movement. He would move his eyes toward voices in the room, but again he would not focus. We noticed some of dad's fine motor skills starting to kick in. His toes would wiggle, his whole hand will clench, his pointer finger moved back and forth across the sheet, his thumb move back and forth...all small things that give up hope and bring encouragement!

This evening just after I turned dad over to the nurses, he started bleed. Earlier in the evening dad ripped two of the stitches out that keep the trach in place. He moved around so much he re-opened the wound. Dad is on blood thinners which meant that the nurses could not get dad's trach to stop bleeding. They sedated dad, stopped his blood thinner and called in his doctor from Ann Arbor. A nurse had to sit with dad and keep pressure around the trach to keep dad from bleeding too much. They did a great job keeping my dad safe. By the time the doctor drove in from Ann Arbor dad's blood had finally started to clot.

The plan is to keep dad sedated until he is healed. He will be in the CCU for the next day at least. He may be sedated longer. It all depends on him and how quickly he heals.