Miracles and Answers

The report from Ryan's MRI came back, and while it's all Greek to me, I hear that the visual comparison of the two MRIs is pretty impressive and miraculous. Hopefully sometime this week I'll be able to view the images for myself. 💜😊

Because of the major improvement shown in the MRI, his PA no longer believes he needs a consultation with a neurologist. She was almost in tears when she received the radiologist's report. She said that the areas of his brain that looked like they should have died have almost completely recovered. There are still a few spots here and there of damage, but nothing so widespread as before! And this morning Ryan was able, for the first time, to answer her questions about how many fingers she was holding in his peripheral vision and what color her gloves were! (He didn't always get the number of fingers correct, but he when he was wrong he was only 1 finger away from being right.)

With Ryan's anxiety being so out-of-control today, he was getting depressed. He kept telling me, "I can't do this anymore!" and "I'm trying so hard, but I just can't hold myself together!" 😔 I was doing all I could to help him, and I walked to the other side of the room to grab a computer to put on some music for him, and suddenly he had ripped his trach out again! Thankfully the right people were close by, and they made the decision to just leave it out! 😄 So Ryan is now trach-less, and much happier without having that stuck in his throat! They didn't even have to do stitches - just a simple dressing on his neck for a few days until the hole heals. 💜

Unfortunately, removing his trach did not ease his anxiety. They had given him some Benadryl to help with the itching he was feeling, and then his PA decided to give him one dose of Seroquel. Those two meds combined completely sedated Ryan! He might be a little over-sedated, but in this instance I think it's a major blessing because he has been able to get the sleep that he desperately needs! It was a little scary for me, at first, because when I would try to wake Ryan up he would open his eyes but then fall right back to sleep before responding. A few times he was able to answer yes/no questions, but his response was very slight, and very delayed. At one point, he said to me, "I need help waking up!" in a panicked voice. But I assured him that he was ok, and to just get some good sleep. Now we have a different medication lined up in case his anxiety returns, and we are stopping the medication that we believe is causing the anxiety. We can't stop that medication cold turkey though, so it may be a few more days of dealing with these side effects.

His physical and speech therapists visited him this afternoon and were able to get some responses from him. He told them that he wanted to sit up and eat some applesauce. He was still super groggy, but did pretty well. Sadly, he said that the applesauce didn't taste right, and he wasn't very motivated to keep eating. He said the same thing about the Mountain Dew ice chips I gave him last night -- they didn't taste right. But tomorrow is a new day, and we will hope for things to be better!

With Ryan sleeping so deeply today, we were able to observe that, even with him getting oxygen through a nasal cannula, his oxygen saturation levels would drop dramatically. His breathing never stopped though. His respiratory therapist suspects that this could be an indication of a central nervous system sleep apnea, where his brain seems to just stop sending the signal that oxygen needs to go to his extremities when he's in a deep sleep. This is not the same as obstructive sleep apnea, where the throat closes off. He will have a basic sleep study done tomorrow night, just here in his hospital room, to verify that. If that is the case, it is very likely that sleep apnea is what caused this stroke. The solution to sleep apnea is having Ryan use a CPAP or BiPAP machine when he sleeps. Even though it's not for certain, it feels SOOO good to have some sort of an answer of why all of this happened!

A caring staff member stopped me in the hall today to see how Ryan was doing, since she hadn't been assigned to his team in a while. When I explained the miracles that were happening, she was so happy for us. She said that God must be working lots of miracles here, because there have been a few other patients that arrived here unresponsive, and, like Ryan, were surrounded by faith-filled family and friends, and they have been making miraculous recoveries as well. 💜💜💜 There are miracles all around us, every single day! Do we have the eyes to see them? I hope you'll take some time today to look for the miracles in your own life, and give thanks to God for his goodness and love! 💜💜💜