Treatment Plan as of 9/17/12

So yesterday the seizures began again when he had been off of the medication for about 30 hours. That obviously was a bit of a let down because we were feeling hopeful that we wouldn't need to go back to the medical coma. But getting where we are means a couple of good things: 1) He doesn't need that much of the coma medicine to control the seizures and 2) In planning out going back in for our second round of medical coma we don't need to plan on keeping him under for as long as we might have needed to if his seizures were harder to control. These two things help to minimize his risk while he is here because he will hopefully have more time where he will be able to cough and help clear his lungs to reduce the risk of infection. The other thing that happened by the end of yesterday is that he became slightly more swollen again. When I mentioned this to the attending this morning he pointed out to me that the medication for the medical coma also helps to "confuse" his white blood cells that are making all this inflammation and wreaking so much havoc in his body. What that means to me is that although we do not have a diagnosis 18 days into this journey we are doing the right things by shutting down his immune system. Beyond that, it continues the hope that as the medications to shut down the immune system work more and more, he will get better and better. One day hopefully that will mean him back again but for now we are in a process of accepting the small wins and taking the challenges in stride.

Today we have the next dose of the immune suppression medication. Beyond that maybe US Airways will actually run the flight to get me home to Vegas.

Crossing my fingers that both of those things go well.

Bryn