Update #134 on Kevin - ICU

Okay, much to update. Good stuff too.


Kevin has been off any breathing machines for over twenty-four hours. He's on flowby or wallflow air. It's basically just room air with adjustable oxygen (right now he's on 50% oxygen).

They stopped irrigating his bladder about 30 hours or so ago and he has had very little blood showing up, just occassional spots. That should continue to clear up over time.

He's only got one antibiotic left out of the three he was on for the pneumonia/infection. It is scheduled to end on Wednesday.

Gastro doctors scheduled a peg tube replacement this morning and it was done before we got here. We were pleasantly surprised when we got here and found out about it. Kevin's Critical Care doctor was surprised that the gastro docs could fit it in so quick and do the procedure in Kevin's room.

Kevin has MRI's scheduled for tomorrow (which again were ordered by his neurologist before Kevin came to the ER). These MRI's are for the regular recovery process and are of his brain and brain stem specifically.

The CC Doctor told us that Kevin has transfer orders ready for him to be moved into a step down unit on the other side of the hospital. However, there has been a waiting list, so we aren't sure when or if he will get moved there before being discharged later in the week.

Now, we are actively looking at post discharge stuff like reopening his home care nursing, alerting his doctors, etc… We are going to be requesting more daily nursing hours from insurance. In fact, we were already looking to do that before this sudden experience and had to put it off. Kevin requires more care than the eight hours of nursing he has been getting. Please pray for this need.

Kevin will also be getting a short break from physical, occupational and speech therapy. We haven't yet decided when in March he will start back up, but we will also be discussing this with his doctors as we make the decision.

Prior to this hospitlization, Kevin has continued to do new things in therapy and his therapists have so great and creative as they stimulate and improve Kevin's functions. His body control continues to get better. He has stood assisted by therapists, and increased neck control to where he can hold his neck up to 17 minutes long once. Back in June, his record for neck control was only a few minutes. He still needs to do this more consistently, but the increase is exciting. In August, we took Kevin for a swallow study which tracked different thickness of liquids as an Xray showed which of his muscles were/weren't working. This study gave Kevin's speech therapist the information needed to know which muscles in the back of his neck needed stimulated to improve swallowing. She has wanted to schedule a new swallow study so that we have a benchmark for comparison.

This ICU stay may give Kevin a little bit of a setback, but as you can probably tell (or already know) Kevin is a fighter. Two steps forward, one step back is still progress.

Thanks for all the notes that were sent through the hospital website, we read them to him today. The ones from February 9 & 10 just got here. Feel free to keep sending them and we'll keep reading them to him. The link is http://www.sjmc.org/general.asp?id=322&siteuse=11 and you can fill out the form. There are fifteen of them taped to Kevin's wall.

Thanks so much for your prayers and encouragement,
Matt, Angie and family

Quicklinks to Recent posts -
Update #133 - http://bit.ly/update133
Update #132 - http://bit.ly/update132
Update #131 - http://bit.ly/update131
Update #130 - http://bit.ly/update130
Update #129 - http://bit.ly/update129
Update #128 - http://bit.ly/update128
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