Wednesday, May 23, 2007

The other side

About a week to the day I found out my brother was admitted to the hospital for TBI secondary to TIA's. They did an MRI three weeks before and found nothing, three weeks later they found lesions/bleeding the parietal, temporal, and occipital areas of the brain. He's been in ICU for a week now and last night they moved him to a MED-SURG floor. I guess they kept him in ICU so long because he needed to be supervised, but really he just need a sitter and could have been out as soon as Sunday in my opinion. (My mom agrees and she's an APN.) Anyway, it was strange being on the other side of the experience: NS to family member of patient in the hospital, but I also felt more useful just because I understood more about what was going on.

He is getting better as the blood is reabsorbed, but it's hard to tell because they keep sedating him so he doesn't over react to his confusion (being that there is a problem interferring with his mental faculties.) I can't believe the Dr.'s even considered putting him in the psych ward because of his confusion, when the problem is primarly neurological injury (two completely different types of floors in hospitals.) At least they decided correctly and went with Med-Surg. My mom and I would have not stood for otherwise. Personally I think he needs to be at another bigger hospital more capable of handling his situation specifically. I know because that was my last rotation.

Anyway, pray that his healing progresses so that then more tests can be run to find out what area is the focal point of his seizures so they can successfully perform surgery (if possible) and alleviate the problem which put him in the hospital in the first place. (Run on sentences are fun!)

1 comment:

jamin said...

Wow, that is scary. I'll keep him in my prayers.