Stimuli

Hi folks,

There were a couple definite good points coming out of today. The big one for me is that Doug's cranial pressure is down to normal levels for the first time since the accident. A few days ago they were talking spikes to around 30 on a scale of 60, basically just slightly below the crisis level, and hovering not real far under that. However, today it's been hovering around 5 or 6, normal pressure. His blood pressure and oxygen levels are both good, and his heartrate's a steady 43. The doctors would be worried about that being low, but have decided Doug's just in good shape.

Late today Dan and Jen met with the neurosurgery team to talk about what's going to happen the next couple days. Tomorrow they're going to start weening Doug off the heavy sedative he's been on to decrease brain activity & reduce the swelling and bleeding. That process will take 3 or 4 days. After that, we'll just have to see. To be honest, no one's really sure when he'll regain consciousness after that. It's basically up to him at that point, but he's definitely a scrapper, so I think he'll fight back. The key thing right now is that the swelling is down, so he's making definite progress.

One of the things all that means is that there will probably still be no visitors until late this weekend or early next weekend. It's definitely been hard not seeing him at all, but reducing the stimuli in the room has contributed to enabling the damage to heal and the swelling to lessen. You can actually see the pressure rise on the monitors when people have been able to go in and see him briefly. It's been rough just hanging out in the waiting room because of that, but on the upside, I see a positive: That means our presence is felt.

In fact, once the induced coma has worn off, there will be visitors allowed in the hopes of providing (controlled) stimuli, to try and help Doug came back. What Jen and Dan would like to do next week if things go well is to have people take turns spending time talking to Doug, playing music, holding macaroni and cheese by his nose, whatever. Also really good would be if people can make posters and print blown up pictures to hang in Doug's room. I know all you robotics and cycling people have tons of good pictures and videos, so we need to get all those together so the whole room is just filled with things Doug loves. We'll also try to post recent pictures from Doug's life on here for people who haven't seen them.

So, that's the word for tonight. There's still a lot of waiting and patience required, but things are definitely looking good.

– joe