Day 62 - Aug 1, 2008

I am a little bit worried today because Kevin is back to sleeping all day again. I don't want to say that he is back in his coma, but he barely moves and only opens his eyes for maybe 10-15 mins all day. This has been for 2-3 days now. Now I know that he just had surgery and I know he had an MRI yesterday, but still...I just think something is wrong. I am hoping that they will tap him again tomorrow and maybe that will make the difference.

They did put him in a chair today. It's kinda like a bed that works itself into a chair and I was concerned about it from the getgo because you typically have to wear a helmet when you have no skull covering part of your brain and are out of bed. But they put him in it and luckily, they realized rather quickly that he just can't do it. It was supposed to be for 4 hours and I don't think he was even in it 15 minutes. His neck muscles are too weak to hold up the left side of his head because it is so large. I say get that shunt in, let some of the fluid drain off and maybe his head size will be reduced enough to make a difference. But that's my take on it and I am not a doctor so who knows.

We also found out today that Kevin has some new bone growth. I guess it's common in burn victims because their calcium levels are much higher while healing and mostly it just flows throughout the body. Unfortunately, Kev has calcium that is depositing in at least one area and bone is growing on top of bone. It's not a good thing and it can be painful, so an anti-inflammatory medication was given to him today to keep the muscles from being inflamed around the new bone growth. This is happening in his upper right leg and we caught it because of all the pain he would be in when moving that right leg to the center of the bed. It's just horrible to see him grimacing and turning red from it hurting so much.

And Kevin's right arm has been curling inward lately with a lot of tension (mistaken for strength). I was worried because he was only moving it in and never outward and it appears that this is spasticity (sp) or major muscle spasms, like charlie horses. He can't help it and I know how painful those can be, but he has been handling it well for the most part. We are now trying to pull the arm back down next to his side so that it doesn't 'get stuck' curled up on his chest toward his throat. Not an easy feat because the spasms don't allow you to move the part of the body that is affected and you definitely don't want to force it. So when he relaxes, we just put it back to his side.

Truthfully, this really wasn't one of our better days. I did get all of my emails back (thank goodness!), but Kevin didn't have a great day. Maybe tomorrow will be better...