22 Sep

Colin seems to be stable, temperature 36.6, heartrate 80 - 90 ish, heavily sedated but opened his eyes briefly and definitelly recognised us, but only fleetingly, then back into the mists. It's an interesting situation - they give him a drug to suppress his normaly respiration, so that he doesn't fight the respirator, and then when they wean him off the respirator they have to decrease that drug so that his natural breathing takes over - they are very wary of weaning him too early because if he's not ready for it then he has to go back on the respirator. They also have to bring him back to consciousness so that he works with them. At the moment he is too restless when he surfaces so they sedate him heavily, so its quite a fine balancing act they have to perform. Weaning will only start on Monday, if the indications are all good, as the nursing staff have to wait for the go ahead from the specialists. Obviously the longer under constant anasthesia the greater the risks of other problems cropping up. His urine output dropped yesterday and that could mean kidney's showing signs of stress, but they gave him something to encourage urine production and it worked, so we're hoping for the go ahead on Monday, as his body will function better when he's conscious.
Ilse did some more research on "lung shock" or ARDS (Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome), which appears to be what affected Colin as a result of the breaks to the bones in his body - bone marrow and fat get released into the blood supply and find their way into the capillaries supplying the lungs and cause damage to the "extremely thin membrane (alveolar- capillary membrane) that prevents fluids from passing into the alveolar space. ... damage to the alveolar-capillary membrane causes it to become permeable. This allows fluid from the blood vessels to flood the air sacs, making it difficult, and sometimes impossible, for oxygen to enter the capillaries." (See the ohiohealth link below.)

Thereafter, he developed some infection, which has by now hopefully cleared up.
The difficulty which he had excreting urine has resulted in his body becoming quite bloated - but as indicated above they gave him something which sorted that out, although his urine production tonight wasn't that good.

Links to ARDS can be found on
http://www.ohiohealth.com/bodymayo.cfm?xyzpdqabc=0&id=6&action=detail&ref=3795
http://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/health/dci/Diseases/Ards/Ards_All.html
http://www.ards.org/learnaboutards/whatisards/harborview/
You will see that the reported mortality rate is pretty high - 30 - 40 % - I am sure that Colin has left those sort of odds behind him. Thanks to all for your thoughts and prayers. Ilse chatted to a guy in the waiting room whose 10 year old son was involved in a motor accident today and is in a coma - Eeesch... what a heartbreaking place a hospital can be - I was watching cricket while this poor guy was sitting there all on his own.

More tomorrow or monday.