Post from a year ago today

This is such a hard time for me. I can't help reliving every day we spent in the PICU with Gage. Not knowing....
This is what Charlie wrote a year ago today:


After having to wait for doctors who cared about Gage to come back from Thanksgiving break...and waiting for test results during the Christmas break...now the 4th of July is going to make us wait again.

Since Gage is not making any purposeful movements, the doctors are finding it very challenging to do any really informative neurological assessments. The big test will be an MRI...but they can't do that until 5-7 days after the trauma occurred; and the holiday weekend is going to push that back until Monday. So Mary and I will suffer through the weekend, waiting.

Now that the sedation has fully gone out of his system, he is pretty much back to where we were on Saturday. He moves and opens his eyes without focus or purpose. And sometimes, he acts like he's got his pacifier...which of course he doesn't. Instead, he has a breathing tube, an NG tube, and an NJ tube vying for space in the back of his throat.

He is quite puffy and swollen from all the fluids they had to give him. Those same fluids have made his lungs swollen...which they are trying to correct.

After talking to the infectious disease doctors yesterday, and the other swarm of doctors during rounds in the PICU, it is clear that this whole event was brought on by an infection in the blood. Because Gage has a suppressed immune system, this type of infection is particularly devastating...which is why he degraded so fast.

So, we will wait for the MRI, and hope that in the meantime they can wean Gage from the ventilator, and he shows signs of improving.