9 September 2007

Well this morning his temperature was still high at 38.4 although he actually felt hotter. His hands are very swollen as is his neck. His breathing was however more relaxed and not like he was running a marathon. Probably because his heart rate was down a bit to 118. The nurse from hell was on duty again – not really from hell but as officious as hell. Spoke to Oom Johnny Rautenbach, Ilse's uncle in PE, who is a doctor, who confirms that they can keep people like that for a long time, (unconscious and on a ventilator) so it appears that everyone who knows confirms that although it looks pretty scary, its quite normal if you're used to that sort of thing.

We drove back this afternoon and haven't heard from mom and Lynette so won't be worrying them. The hospital has mom's cell number and will phone him if anything goes wrong, so everytime her cell phone rings our hearts skip a beat. So I haven’t phoned her and she hasn't phoned me – no news is good news at this stage. I'll be going down again next weekend, maybe bringing mom back depending on progress. Lyn is coming back tomorrow with Colin's work bakkie.

We have ICU's phone number and will phone tomorrow night to speak to our friendly sister who should be on duty then.

To sum up his status. He is totally under sedation and unconscious. It is unlikely that he has more than fleeting seconds of very confused consciousness in a day. He grimaces with pain when they turn him onto his left side every four hours and you can see that he is trying to cough every few minutes. He has slime and mucous building up in his lungs which needs to be drained periodically and this causes him discomfort so he is not so far under that he doesn't feel some pain and discomfort but he's pretty far down. Although it all looks quite scary and there is still danger until he starts breathing on his own, that's not going to happen until the lung infection clears up substantially. At the moment there's a third world war raging in his body and theres no doubt that the good guys will win, but it may still take a few more days. One of the friendly male sisters described his situation as "critical but relatively stable", which pretty much sums it up.

Keep up the good thoughts, prayers and positive thinking and thanks to all.