Monday Evening

Denise arrived today shortly after the PT visit. I took the opportunity to go into my office for a few hours this afternoon. I'm not sure whether I intended to catch up on some work or some sleep, but the latter didn't happen. By the time I was ready to leave I decided I wasn't up to the drive home, so I came back to the hospital to spend another night.

The internal medicine guys decided to do some more tests relating to Jake's high blood pressure and rapid heart rate, so he received an echocardiogram and later an ECG. (His night nurse, Karen, just came in and mentioned that those test results came back fine.)

He's sitting up in bed and removing his c-collar a lot more now and he's drinking, mostly water. Because he's able to drink he's doing a lot less swabbing and suctioning. I don't recall whether I've gone into this previously, so I will s'plain.

Jake has had a lot of drainage and blood clotting in his mouth. With his mouth so badly injured the staff can't really get in there to clean it up properly (at least not without sedating him). And, because he hasn't been able to drink he's had a hard timing clearing up all that junk. So, on about an hourly basis, he has been using these sponge-stick swabs to scrub the inside of his mouth and then uses a suction tube to clear it all out. He has to do it himself, because he can work around all the damaged, sensitive spots without hurting himself any worse. He seems to be fine with it, but it is very painful to watch. (At some point I realized that I can't look at his mouth, or even think about it, without involuntarily reaching my hand up and covering my mouth.)

So, the good news is that the drinking water is helping to clean up all the clotting and he has had to do very little swabbing and suctioning today. (I am hoping that this will translate into a little bit more of an opportunity to catch some sleep tonight; most nights we're up at least hourly passing him swabs or suction tubes or whatever he needs to complete the process.)

A few of his friends have shown up, so I'm going to close for now.