Day 4 - Christmas Day

Merry Christmas! 

So this is not exactly how we had envisioned sharing our Christmas together, but we were all together as one big family all the same.  Today we all celebrated Christmas in the waiting room of the hospital critical care unit.  We brought in a folding table, crockpots with ham, mashed potatoes, green beans, sloppy joes, and various other sides and sweets including some great pies.  We probably had more people there today than would have been out to the house for a normal Christmas. 

And we saw more encouraging signs from Dad.  He is more awake today than yesterday.  He seems to turn his head towards us when we talk with him.  He doesn't seem to focus all that well at this point.  The doctors would like to see him follow some simple yet purposeful commands like "give a thumbs up".  This would be anything that he wouldn't normally just do as a reflex and could clearly be attributed to him understanding and controlling his response.

When the nurses are working to stimulate him, he will call his name really loud and he will generally open his eyes and seem to look at them.  They run a prickly wheel type tool up the bottom of his foot and he now consistently draws his foot back.  If the doctor pinches his toe, he will pull his foot back.  His pupils react to the flash light.  He has healthy gag and couch reflexes.  When the doctor pinches dad's finger really hard, he will contort his face and grimace, but will not pull his hand back the same as he does his foot for some whatever reason. 

He has not needed a lot of support from the respirator, but they will not even consider taking it out until he is ready to support his airway.  And they don't feel comfortable that he will support his airway unless he can follow simple commands.  By "support his airway" they mean that he can swallow and/or cough on command.  Otherwise, he may not swallow his saliva as we normally would and could aspirate it into his lungs.  Also, if he were to throw up, he would also run the same risk. This would be very dangerous over a period of time and lead to pneumonia and/or infections. 

So in the meantime, we are really hopefully that the progress he has made so far will lead to him following our simple commands, showing that he does in fact understand and can respond appropriately when asked.  At this point, it feels like we are really close.