Update on Soren

[redbird]

Reposting from coyotegoth's journal:

[Coyotegoth is] just back from the hospital. baldanders is intermittently conscious-- he was resting when [Coyotegoth] left. roadnotes is bearing up as well as one could hope for at such a time. Apparently, they're setting up a bed for Soren in the ICU; he didn't seem to be able to speak, but [Coyotegoth] saw him nod in response to questions; he seems somewhat cognizant. He's resting now; will update when I know more.

ETA: elisem has posted an update in the comments. Things are looking promising.

Comments

[janeehawkins.livejournal.com]

Thank you for update. I'm chewing nails out here in Seattle. Sigh.

[roadnotes.livejournal.com]

The doctors are talking about weeks of recovery, but they're talking about recovery.

[gothgeekgirl.livejournal.com]

Oh, good.

[janeehawkins.livejournal.com]

Recovery. Weeks not months or years.

The sun shines into my heart.

[nex0s.livejournal.com]

Recovery is good! Weeks is good!

Still in my thoughts.

N.

[brisingamen.livejournal.com]

Yippee! I feel distinctly lighter than I did this morning.

[mjlayman.livejournal.com]

Tell him when I first woke up from my stroke-coma, I could talk, but I didn't know the names of any things or people. They came back in six weeks. It was so frustrating, I knew I really knew those names, but they were just out of reach. They did come back, and I bet his talking will, too.

[athenais.livejournal.com]

Thank you.

[stealthpup.livejournal.com]

Oh jeez.

Please send Vijay my best, and my hopes for strength for them both.

[elisem.livejournal.com]

(Please forgive if you have already seen this posted elsewhere. I have several places I'm supposed to put it.)

OK. I just got a phone call from PNH, who is at the hospital. He says there are some encouraging things.

He said that the top priority right now is to bring Soren's blood pressure down from the scary heights it was at. There is definite progress on this; yesterday it was at two-hundred-mumble over oh-god, and now it's at one-hundred-something over well-that's-better-than-yesterday-at-least. (I'm sorry I don't have the exact numbers in my head, but I went from "sound sleep" to "phone call" without stopping to grab my number memory.) Get the blood pressure down and this reduces the risk of further bleeds, and the risk of all sorts of other things. Get him stabilized at a safer level, and then everything else can be addressed.

"Everything else" includes stuff like finding out exactly what the damage is and then working to get back as much function as possible. As Velma and a number of other people said, he doesn't have speech right now, though he's made some words here and there, and PNH reports that Velma said he achieved a couple of phrases during the night. ("Oh, come on!" being the most memorable, apparently; last night Patrick said that Soren's pissed off, which is kind of a good sign, you know?) Patrick says that though Soren's not talking, he is answering questions with eloquent gestures. TNH asked him point-blank, "Do you have language?" and she got a strong affirmative nodding in reply. This is major goodness, because he's in there processing, even if his speaker isn't working at the moment, and he can communicate that he is processing. That's somewhere to start, when getting things back, and it's a pretty darned big somewhere, even though we're not to the "OK, what's the recovery and rehab plan?" stage yet.

Getting to that stage is the goal right now. Sounds like they're making progress, but there's no official word yet on what's what. But Soren's in there, and he knows we're out here, and messages are being exchanged.

So that's where we are right now. (Hope I got it right; still kinda sleep-foggy.)

Short form: still scary situation, not out of the woods yet, but recovery definitely a possibility. Encouraging signs: BP coming down, and Soren is definitely in there and communicating even if he can't speak.

So now we hope and wait and do the things we do, and let the docs and nurses do the things they do, and we see how it goes.

Thank you

[redbird]

Thank you very much for the information.

There is nothing whatsoever to forgive: redundancy is an active good in communication, and different people will see things in different places.