Last
night Raul only had a brief freak out, and then slept pretty well
through the night after watching his iPad for a while. He slept in this
morning, and then had a pretty good day. Not too much going on for him
today other than a bandage change and changing the dressings on all
three of his lines. His teacher read to him again, got back
in the chair for a while with PT, and tonight the music therapist sang to him.
As far as the MRI results, we are pretty much back in a wait and see mode. The results were essentially the best we could have hoped for! No focal damage anywhere, just the overall shrinkage that had already been seen on the CT scan last week. This may not even be related to his cardiac arrest, as that would be quite quick for it to show up.
This does not mean that he will not end up having neurological defecits, but means that we can be optimistic for at least some improvement and that there are currently no areas that we know of that have no chance of recovering. So now we just need to give him time to show us what he can do!
We have been told that, despite the fact that most of the meds. are processed through the liver, kidney patients take much longer to get the sedatives out of their system. Raul is still pretty well sedated, and is also still having some of the ICU psychosis/delirium, both of which will improve with time. We are seeing small signs of improvement here and there.
The other good news is that all his HLH markers were improved this week! We will have to continue following them and see if they stay down, as with the Etoposide they improved briefly and then worsened again. But right now they are hopeful that the Campath is helping! His Soluble IL2 went from the 27 thousand range last week to the 3 thousands this week!
Below is one of his first small smiles (after a yawn) since his cardiac arrest:
As far as the MRI results, we are pretty much back in a wait and see mode. The results were essentially the best we could have hoped for! No focal damage anywhere, just the overall shrinkage that had already been seen on the CT scan last week. This may not even be related to his cardiac arrest, as that would be quite quick for it to show up.
This does not mean that he will not end up having neurological defecits, but means that we can be optimistic for at least some improvement and that there are currently no areas that we know of that have no chance of recovering. So now we just need to give him time to show us what he can do!
We have been told that, despite the fact that most of the meds. are processed through the liver, kidney patients take much longer to get the sedatives out of their system. Raul is still pretty well sedated, and is also still having some of the ICU psychosis/delirium, both of which will improve with time. We are seeing small signs of improvement here and there.
The other good news is that all his HLH markers were improved this week! We will have to continue following them and see if they stay down, as with the Etoposide they improved briefly and then worsened again. But right now they are hopeful that the Campath is helping! His Soluble IL2 went from the 27 thousand range last week to the 3 thousands this week!
Below is one of his first small smiles (after a yawn) since his cardiac arrest:
Love the smile picture! Thanks, Caroline, and give Raul a kiss from Uncle John. He's working hard to get better!!
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