Wednesday August 13th: When we arrived back at the hospital this morning, Joyce was still running a fever and was breathing heavily. The neurology NP came to see her again. She was not responding to any neurological commands. The neurologist doctor is supposed to stop by to talk to us about the unresponsiveness and scheduling a new brain MRI. It has not been scheduled yet at this point. The doctor scheduled a bronchoscopy for today. This was done since the medicine they gave her yesterday did not expel the fluids in her lungs. After this test was done, they found pieces of food in her lungs which occurred when she threw up and aspirated the food back down into her lungs. This caused an infection in her lungs and the subsequent fever. They have put her on some sedation medicine because there is a lot of pain involved with the lung infection. Stephanie works at a Neurosurgery Doctors Office in Raleigh so she had the reports faxed over and drove the disc of the MRIs and CTs to Raleigh so that her Practice Administrator and Doctors could review the information. One of the doctors was only able to review the reports and his opinion was the kind of damage they are saying Joyce has and her lack of responsiveness and mental status is what is seen in fatal car accident victims. However, when the other doctor actually viewed the images, he agreed that there is no lack of oxygen/brain damage showing on the MRI. Although, with the type of brain injury they are diagnosing her with, that should be viewable on the MRI. Since the MRI was only done 24 hours after she was found unresponsive, they are anxious to see the new one. If there is damage, it will undoubtedly be present on the new one. If it appears there is no damage, the doctor said the question we need to be asking is why is she not waking up then? If there is no damage, there is no medical reason she should not responding. On the flip side, if there is brain damage on the MRI then there will be a lot of discussions on what the next steps will be. When Stephanie arrived back from Raleigh, Joyce was moving her arm and squeezing all of our hands at different times. It is not done on command (when we ask her to) so the doctors are saying they dont know for sure but believe it is just reflexive muscle movements and not anything she is doing purposefully. She has had bouts of heaving breathing and elevated heart rate this evening though. Please continue to pray and give your support.
Posted on: Thu, 14 Aug 2014 00:21:22 +0000
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