medical update, Nov. 1st

As Amy remains in the ICU this week, as she will for approximately the next two to three weeks, the nurses continue to focus on clearing her lungs and regulating her breathing.

Although Amy is young and has very strong, athletic lungs, her respiratory system has been of the greatest concern this week. Currently Amy is resting better and is being weened off of added sedation and slowly receiving less added oxygen. However, she will remain as heavily sedated as necessary to keep her breathing regulated so that her lungs can heal, drain fluid, and fight the infection.

Amy's recovery process will likely include week to week complications as we are experiencing now. Because of how slowly the brain heals and the time it takes it to re-organize its processing of the outside world, we cannot expect day to day changes in Amy's cognitive reactivity right now. The goal for the near future is to stabilize Amy's health in the challenging circumstance we are faced with. Once her overall health stabilizes more, and she is no longer fighting an infection or a fever, then her sedation can begin to be lessened. When this sedation is again lessened we hope she will begin to react again towards family as she had last week and weekend.

At first Amy's condition was changing hour to hour and then day to day in this recovery process. Now we need to adjust our expectations to day to day and week to week as her body works on its own overall healing. Amy's condition is still very serious, but her vitals are currently stable.

It is important for us to remember as Amy's loving friends, supporters, and community that her brain is experiencing an overload of stimulation in the ICU environment and as it begins interacting with the world again. Brain injury patients need to be kept calm and relaxed at all times in order to facilitate the most natural healing and cognitive processing. Amy will remain in the ICU, then spend a period of weeks in a less intensive care unit in the same hospital before being moved to a brain injury recovery center. Amy will not likely have another MRI for about a month as the brain has begun a long process which will be monitored closely for changes over the next 18 months.

In gratitude always for your love and support.