Updated update
Sep. 14th, 2004 11:08 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jeriendhalME: Still can't sleep worth a damn, even after taking a couple of Benedryl before bedtime. I considered myself lucky that I slept in until 2:45 this morning. The only real upside is that I actually get time to fool on the computer nowadays instead of riding herd on Thomas after I wake up. I should write more, but I spend most of my time playing Morrowind.
TOM: He's settled into the new daycare center without any problem, and is busy charming the heck out of his teachers. Lately he's taken a distinct interest in tumbling, and doing headstands propped up against the couch. Which is pretty neat considering Tracy and I haven't done a think to demonstrate these skills to him. More importantly he's really started to chatter in the past couple of weeks, forming two and three word sentences, letting us help him repeat words until he pronouces them properly, and identifying objects and people without prompting. It seems to be following the pattern that the doctor at K&K noted, with Tom running about a year behind other kids.
DAD: They're moving him out of the ICU this morning to a private room, which is encouraging. He's also (very carefully) exercising, and can sit up in a chair with some help from the nurses during the transfer. The downside is that the pain medication they've been giving him has made him really loopy and causing minor hallucinations. Such as yesterday he got angry with Mom and accused her of seeing another man. Which is so totally out of character for him (Dad is the most gentle, easy-going man I know) that it would be funny, if it hadn't made Mom burst into tears. I hope she'll be all right after my sister Robin leaves at the end of the week.
TOM: He's settled into the new daycare center without any problem, and is busy charming the heck out of his teachers. Lately he's taken a distinct interest in tumbling, and doing headstands propped up against the couch. Which is pretty neat considering Tracy and I haven't done a think to demonstrate these skills to him. More importantly he's really started to chatter in the past couple of weeks, forming two and three word sentences, letting us help him repeat words until he pronouces them properly, and identifying objects and people without prompting. It seems to be following the pattern that the doctor at K&K noted, with Tom running about a year behind other kids.
DAD: They're moving him out of the ICU this morning to a private room, which is encouraging. He's also (very carefully) exercising, and can sit up in a chair with some help from the nurses during the transfer. The downside is that the pain medication they've been giving him has made him really loopy and causing minor hallucinations. Such as yesterday he got angry with Mom and accused her of seeing another man. Which is so totally out of character for him (Dad is the most gentle, easy-going man I know) that it would be funny, if it hadn't made Mom burst into tears. I hope she'll be all right after my sister Robin leaves at the end of the week.
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Date: 2004-09-14 09:15 am (UTC)On the hallucinations front: is he on IV morphine? Is he twitchy and getting weaker, physically, and not tracking what visitors are saying? If so, you might want to mention to the doctor that you'd like to see if your dad is experiencing morphine toxicity. My mom had that a few years ago after surgery, and Alec had it twice. There are other classes of drugs out there (Alec has done well with fentanyl and dilaudid (and oxycodone for breakthrough pain, only).
If he's otherwise lucid, well, that does happen with narcotics, sometimes. On dilaudid, Alec saw a white cat with a ring around one eye (a friend wondered if he were channeling Target!). Not once, but off and on for days. We started keeping a chart of when he mentioned seeing the cat. *I* was afraid that he had developed a problem with his brain, but our primary oncologist said that it's not at all uncommon for the particular hallucination to be the same thing, and for the patient to be otherwise lucid, as Alec was. Weird, huh?
Still sending healing thoughts and prayers..
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Date: 2004-09-14 09:43 am (UTC)Dad is Perkasett
Dad is Perkasett <sp?> not Morphine. When he's on Morphine he's <i>really</i> out of it, experiencing full-blown hallucinations. On the Perkasett he was only seeing a momma cat with kittens on the ledge outside of a six story window.
Today they've switched him to pills, but we're still worried. He claims not to know who he is, even thought he recognizes myself, my mom, and my sisters, and he's very irritable with the nurses and doctors when Mom isn't in the room. Mom is worried that he lost some brain function when he was under anesthesia for the operation. I know he certainly seems very disoriented, and has a hard time focusing on anything for more than a few moments. But given the facts of his health and age, it's a miracle that he survived the operation at all, and that he's still with us. If he's lost part of himself, all we can do is just make sure he's comfortable and enjoy what time we have left with him. :/