Bringing you up to date
Today is the first day we have been able to let you know about Mike's condition. Thanks to our sister Nancy for preparing this blog site so I am able to update you.
It was a very scary experience to hear on June 16th your only baby brother had fallen off a horse and had to be air lifted to a trauma hospital. Victor, an emergency room nurse kept us informed until he was placed in the ICU Shock Trauma Unit. Mike had to be placed on a ventilator and have a tube inserted deep into the brain to drain the bleed that occurred with the fall. My mother (Shirley) and I(Cathy) arrived in Baltimore that evening. Mike did squeeze our hand and it appeared that he knew we were there.
By the next day, June 17th he was fighting the ventilator tube trying to cough it out and chew it in two. To everyone's surprise they removed the breathing tube. When you have one in you are unable to talk so the first thing we did was ask Mike, "Do you know who this is?" He said Cathy. Then mother tried and he said Momma. We were so excited. The Shock Trauma Unit has very strict visiting hour rules and we were told we had to leave that evening.
We are told that you can take two steps forward and then four steps back. Recovery is a day to day process and Mike will have good days and bad days. The next couple of days were not so good. Mike continues to respond to painful stimuli and becomes unresponsive to voice commands. He never did slip into a coma but is unresponsive at times. Especially when he runs a temperature up to 104 degrees. There is no infection that they can find yet. They culture everything almost every day.
Today June 23rd Mike did the two steps forward and the four steps back. They had removed an artery line, the drainage tube from his head, the feeding tube from his nose to the stomach, and was on nasal cannula oxygen. They placed another feeding tube through the abdomen just for now until he is awake enough to swallow better. The problem is that he is not strong enough nor awake enough to breath deep and cough. He needs to do this to exchange oxygen within his lungs and cough up mucus. So now he is on a pressure mask with oxygen. This pushes the oxygen deep into his lungs for proper exchange. Tonight he has another fever and when this happens he becomes unresponsive. The Critical Care doctors think that the high fevers and high blood pressures are coming from the brain injury. All of the nurses are so very nice and try to keep us calm. I will update you more later. Thank you all for your thoughts and prayers.
It was a very scary experience to hear on June 16th your only baby brother had fallen off a horse and had to be air lifted to a trauma hospital. Victor, an emergency room nurse kept us informed until he was placed in the ICU Shock Trauma Unit. Mike had to be placed on a ventilator and have a tube inserted deep into the brain to drain the bleed that occurred with the fall. My mother (Shirley) and I(Cathy) arrived in Baltimore that evening. Mike did squeeze our hand and it appeared that he knew we were there.
By the next day, June 17th he was fighting the ventilator tube trying to cough it out and chew it in two. To everyone's surprise they removed the breathing tube. When you have one in you are unable to talk so the first thing we did was ask Mike, "Do you know who this is?" He said Cathy. Then mother tried and he said Momma. We were so excited. The Shock Trauma Unit has very strict visiting hour rules and we were told we had to leave that evening.
We are told that you can take two steps forward and then four steps back. Recovery is a day to day process and Mike will have good days and bad days. The next couple of days were not so good. Mike continues to respond to painful stimuli and becomes unresponsive to voice commands. He never did slip into a coma but is unresponsive at times. Especially when he runs a temperature up to 104 degrees. There is no infection that they can find yet. They culture everything almost every day.
Today June 23rd Mike did the two steps forward and the four steps back. They had removed an artery line, the drainage tube from his head, the feeding tube from his nose to the stomach, and was on nasal cannula oxygen. They placed another feeding tube through the abdomen just for now until he is awake enough to swallow better. The problem is that he is not strong enough nor awake enough to breath deep and cough. He needs to do this to exchange oxygen within his lungs and cough up mucus. So now he is on a pressure mask with oxygen. This pushes the oxygen deep into his lungs for proper exchange. Tonight he has another fever and when this happens he becomes unresponsive. The Critical Care doctors think that the high fevers and high blood pressures are coming from the brain injury. All of the nurses are so very nice and try to keep us calm. I will update you more later. Thank you all for your thoughts and prayers.
posted by Mike's Family | 9:33 PM
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