March 5, 2011

• I guess an update is in order

  Hello xanga friends.

  It’s been awhile.

  I wish I could say that everything worked out, but we’re not there yet. After Thanksgiving they placed a permanent shunt in dad. After a few more weeks at the hospital he was moved once again to rehab. A different one this time, but mom and I have concluded that there is no such thing as a “good” rehab / skilled nursing home. He was moved right before Christmas – matter of fact the 23rd or the 24th. He was doing pretty well, working at walking with a walker etc. He was still VERY confused – rambling nonsense much of the time. Everyone kept talking about him having dementia – and we kept telling him he didn’t have that before. He seemed to do pretty well, but kept falling as he kept trying to get up unassisted. Eventually he was released. I think he was there 4 weeks. They released (long before we thought he was ready, although we were ready to have him home) and we brought him to my house for a week. He had his follow up appointment with Neurology and they cleared him. That weekend we took him to Silver City. He was becoming uncooperative – not helping us get him up and back to his wheel chair, not eating well etc.

  The trip down was a long one.

  We got there, settled dad in for the night and he went right to sleep. I should mention one of the problems they had with him in rehab is that he wouldn’t sleep. He would be up all night sometimes and only sleep an hour or two a day.

  We had dinner and visited with my sister and her kids and started getting mom settled back in.

  The next morning my mom couldn’t get my dad to wake up. He’d been asleep since 5:00 pm the previous evening. The whole time we were in ICU and worried about something we’d noticed about dad they would tell us the same thing. If he’s hard to wake up or becomes unresponsive, that’s when you need to worry. We were worried. I convinced mom to call an ambulance. They came and got dad and took him to the hospital. An hour later they announced that his shunt was malfunctioning and that they were life-flighting him back to UNM in Albuquerque. We were in Silver all of 15 hours.

  So they life-flighted him back. They replaced the shunt and all seemed to be going well. Then that shunt malfunctioned and they couldn’t get him awake. They replaced that shunt. He continued to decline. He had another bleed, caused by another stroke.  He got so weak that they had to intubate him. He also developed a touch of pneumonia. He was on a respirator for 9 days. We truly thought that the end was near and our prayers changed from “please heal him” to “please ended his suffering, thy will be done”.  Eventually they took him off the respirator. He was still weak and pretty much unconscious. Finally they decided to yet another shunt – now they’ve had external shunts almost the whole time, and every time they took it off, he became unresponsive. This shunt they put in a vein, and had drain into the heart cavity – risky but they were out of options. Did I mention he some how got a VRE in the process? Some antibiotic resistant bug.

  Anyways, they put in the new shunt and ba-zing! Dad was awake, moving, trying to talk. That was last week. He’s now in a regular room, he passed his swallow test and is on a liquid diet and they are talking about releasing him. He is still confused, though not as much. He is starting to have headaches again, which in the past has been an indicator that the shunt is not working. It could also just be a result of all the brain trauma he’s been through. The ventricles in his brain are “compromised” from the meningitis evidently. That means that they are enlarged and probably won’t ever revert to normal. Dad will never be the same again. Right now we are just thankful he is still with us and showing improvement.

  I don’t know what’s going to happen. I just continue to pray “Thy will be done”.

  • 12:55 pm
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