Thursday, 5th November

Jimmy was sedated again yesterday evening after I left as he keeps fighting those restraints although this is a lighter sedation.  This morning at 7am they turned the adrenaline down from 1 to 0.5 and his blood pressure is a wonderful 119/79.  Then at 10am they stopped sedating him again and turned the adrenaline off completely.

He has spent the whole day coming out of sedation and doing everything he can to try and pull the pipes out his mouth.  He struggles for about 10 minutes and then gets so tired that he falls asleep but doesn't sleep for very long before he is at it again.  By 5pm this evening he was opening his eyes very briefly and turning his head towards me when I spoke to him.  I tried to distract him from fighting too and would tell him to just hold my hand.  I would then take his hand and he would squeeze mine. The more he was coming to, the more frustrated he was becoming and at times a tear would roll down the side of his face.  They had to keep suctioning fluid/mucous from him and also used another suction to remove mucous/saliva from his mouth and at times he even bit the pipe so the sister couldn't move it around.  I noticed he has some horrible sores in his mouth again so they have ordered some meds for this. Jimmy had physio today again which exhausted him.  He slept for about an hour afterwards. 

His white blood cell counts have come up to 4.2, haemoglobin is 8.2, his platelets are 42 and his temperature is 36.5.  He did not have any transfusions today nor a Neupogen injection and Dr Du Toit (haematologist) is over the moon with Jimmy's improvement since yesterday.

Prof Wilcox (pulmonary) said that he is very happy with Jimmy's progress and that if they do not have to sedate him tonight they will turn the ventilator onto oxygen only at 10am tomorrow morning to test his breathing on his own.  He is expecting it to be fine in which case they will extubate (remove the ventilator).

Today was very exhausting as I spent the whole day trying to calm him down an re-assure him.  Jimmy is also exhausted from all the fighting and this makes him cough too, which he can't do with the pipes in his mouth but his body still makes the motion of coughing.

Let's hope that he comes further out of sedation in the next while so that he can understand that his arms are tied down and he has a pipes down his throat and hopefully he will be more relaxed.

PS.  8:46pm - I just phoned to check up on him and they have had to sedate him again as he is just getting too tired.  So......round 2 tomorrow.  The sister says he should come out of sedation at about 5pm tomorrow evening and then they will have to see how it goes overnight again before they can consider doing the breathing test on Saturday morning.