Day 19 - Frustration

One of the nurses mentioned yesterday that Jake is in the "Acute Phase" which is part of the healing process between being critical and not quite ready to be officially in the recovery/rehab phase. He's much more aware of what's going on, he's irritated he can't do what he wants (like pull the heart rate monitor off his chest) and sick of being in bed. The scar on his head itches, his groin itches where they took out the central line and he's just generally agitated. I think he's also really frustrated trying to talk to us, there are things we get like "my feet are cold" or a "thank you" to the nurse (love that he still has good manners!) and there are things we don't. He was grimacing and frustrated for a good 10 minutes before we realized he wanted the head of his bed down. As the nurse said "this is the part they don't show on TV." It's really hard because there are limited things we can do to help him pass the time and keep from from pulling at everything he needs to leave alone. We've been reading to him, he's listening to music and I found he likes silly putty, it's good at keeping his hand busy. I have to be honest, it can be exhausting at times since he's sleeping so little. Our mild mannered, rule follower is currently MIA and I can't wait to have him back, I'm not used to this defiant side of his. :-) I'm sure it's equally frustrating for him to have all these things going on in your head that you're trying to get out of your mouth and people can't always understand.

On a positive note, it's amazing how quickly all of his meds/monitors have gone away. At his peak, he had all this plus one more pump on each tower for a total of 10 pumps (I didn't have a picture of all of them), an ICP monitor for his brain pressure, heart rate monitor, blood pressure monitor, the ventilator and at times an EEG monitor for his brain waves.

Today he's down to three pumps...feeding pump, straight saline and magnesium which is to help prevent the vasospasms in his brain. That's a 21 day treatment that should end on Friday and be his ticket out of the ICU. He still has his blood pressure and heart rate being monitored. The pump you see on the right was left "just in case he needs some IV meds." They also took out one of the PIC lines in his upper arm this morning. So we're down to one PIC line in his left arm, all other IV's are gone too. Progress!