I stayed overnight in the Family Waiting Room. Ugh. I had a loveseat that even shorty 5'4" of me didn't have enough room for. The lights are left on all night so I took the pillowcase off and covered my face with it. Surprise, surprise, surprise. At 3:38 a.m. a hospital caregiver who entered Jim into a research drug trial grabbed my shoulder. Ahhhhh! Geez lady. She didn't even say anything like "are you awake?" She had seen my hand move a little so she assumed I was awake. I am sure I woke up every other family member down that corridor. Anyway she said Jim was approved for the research study (using a new drug to see if it helped spinal cord injury patients improve faster), and she needed more info and my signature. Okay. Nope, I did not get any sleep that night.
Back to the daylight hours and I could visit Jim in his room. Jim had multiple breaks due to his fall which the resident doctor showed me x-rays or scans: cracked pelvic bone, rib and shoulder blade all on the right side. The pelvic bone is just a very small bone with a small white gash in it. Jim's shoulder blade looks like there is a small chip off one little area. The rib fracture I didn't need to see as the resident doc said it was small.
The worst breaks were in Jim's neck - he literally broke his neck in 2 spots. On March 27th, Jim had spinal cord fusion surgery. Jim had vertebrae in his neck fused from C3 to T2 (C is cervical and T is thoracic). So Jim had 7 spinal bones fused with titanium rods. This created a nice open space for the spinal cord which was super swollen from the fall.
The vertebrae in his neck fused from C3 to T2 (C is cervical and T is thoracic).
The surgical doc Dr. Soliman just came in and said everything went extremely well. With the fusions, he said the C3 was a smaller area of injury but the T2 was an actual fracture of the vertebrae so he had to clean out bits of bone but was able to use a lot of health bone to give it good structure. Jim will be in SICU at least for 5 days now but actually Jim was in the same SCIU (surgical intensive care unit) from March 26 to April 12th when he was transferred to the Zablocki Milwaukee Veterans Hospital. He had a setback which was pretty scary. He aspirated and was basically unconscious for days. Jim did have some feeling in his upper arms and his left being dominant is stronger. The surgeon said he can't predict yet for Jim regaining feeling in his legs. He cannot feel anything from waist and down.
He is on pain med and is able to take pills with water now. He is breathing on his own but has an oxygen nasal piece on to help out. It is a large plastic tube secured with white sticky tape to Jim's nose. A smaller tube for a feeding tube in also in that same nostril. Guess what? Jim can feel his face and that sticky tape is driving him nuts. He keeps trying to shake his head to get it off like it is an eyelash tickling him.
