Mostly good day with a few hours of HELL!!

Today ended up being a good day. We came in this morning and Alistair was "watching" Teen Titans Go! His nurse, who was wearing a flight suit because she was on stand by for medic flights, saw on his board what he liked and put it on for him. It's too bad he wasn't more with it because he would have loved seeing her! He opened his eyes a little for us and seemed excited to see us. I helped him eat his jello, he had a little bit of juice and went back to sleep. He would focus on TV a little. We read him books and he would look at the book and kind of focus on the pictures. But, at the very least, I think he was listening.

He is having a heck of a time getting his sedation and pain meds out of his system. At this point the only thing he has going is Tylenol for pain. He looks stoned, he acts really drunk - like on the verge of passing out - and you just feel so bad for the poor kid because I am sure somewhere in there he is trying to communicate with us! It's very frustrating, for everyone!

After his lunch, his nurse tried to order a swallow study for him. He coughed a lot while drinking his broth. But we hypothesized that it was due to getting so much liquid at a faster rate than getting it through a syringe or by spoon. The attending decided that before we did that, we should rule out any neurological issues related to his cardiac arrest on Friday causing his inability to shake off the sedation. She came in and told us they were ordering a CT scan on his head and we should know something soon. We had just come back from lunch (what is it about lunch and bad news!!??!!). When we got that news, my lunch did a backflip in my stomach. It took forever for them to call for his nurse to bring him down, the scan was quick and then it was another 90 minutes to 2 hours before we got results. It was awful waiting. We both sat there imagining all kinds of things. Seth summed it up when he said, "we brought him to Mayo to get fixed, not to break him!" I was imagining our next 20 years taking care of this kid who had such potential. It was not good. Finally they got the images back and it showed nothing, which was GREAT! I could feel the stress draining off of me as reality sunk back in.

Dr. Dearani stopped by too and he said Alistair just needs time. He said to go ahead and  stimulate him as much as we can during the day with the things he likes and keep him quiet at night to keep his diurnal rhythms going. With all this laying around, he will need a lot of rehab to get him moving again. Time is what he needs, time is what we are going to give him, more time here is what we are in for! 

The room next to Alistair's is a short timer's room. They put people there who only need a day or two to recover. Even though I know this, I find it irritating to see all these people roll in and out in short succession. Like this morning, a little girl who was totally out of it came in. This afternoon she was sitting up in bed eating a Popsicle. I would be lying if I said I didn't hate her just a little bit! I hope soon Alistair will be sitting up in bed eating a Popsicle, or better yet walking around the unit eating a Popsicle and flaunting it!

Gabe and Ranae came down for a visit tonight. It was a much needed scale call and nice to spend some time with them! And it was perfect timing as we got our good news while they were there, so having dinner with them was that much sweeter!

Tomorrow is another day. Slow and steady, one day at a time, onward and upward.