Jolene and Holden’s Story

Site created on April 17, 2018

Welcome to our CaringBridge website. We are using it to keep family and friends updated in one place. We appreciate your support and words of hope and encouragement. Thank you for visiting.  
How it all happened: Jolene and Holden were at the James house on Sunday evening. Jolene had been nursing Holden on the second floor. After nursing Jolene was coming down the stairs carrying Holden. The reason is unknown and the stairs are steep and in an old farm house, but Jolene fell. In an effort to protect Holden she  had a hard fall from about the top of the stairs all the way down. Jolene and Holden were taken by ambulance to MCHS Mankato. Jolene could not moved and Holden had a large hematoma and lacerations on his head. Holden received blood and anti-seizure medications (as he began having seizures), and was intubated and place on a ventilator. Holden was stabilized and shipped to St. Mary’s in Rochester by ground. Jeremy and Sam followed. Jolene was diagnosed with a fractured C5 vertebrae, and was also transported by ground to St. Mary’s arriving about an hour and a half after Holden with Jenny.
   Holden went into CT where it was discovered he has skull fractures on both sides of his head. He also has bleeding both on the inside and outside of his brain.  He was placed in a C-collar and taken to the PICU. The plan that night was to sedate him and treat his pain then a repeat CT in the morning. Holden like Jolene was a difficult stick, and staff made several attempts to keep lines in and working for fluids and blood draws. 
Jolene went to surgery shortly after arriving to fuse her C4 and C6 vertebrae together from the front. From there she went to a have a MRI which determined she go back into the OR to fuse the same vertebrae from the back.  She was in surgery total about 6 hours.  She was extubated in the late afternoon, pain was and continues to be hard to control. She has some movement in her arms, and can feel some touch in her lower extremities. There is a lot of swelling around her spinal cord so it will be a day to day and step by step process.
     Holden’s second CT showed more bleeding on the outside of the brain, because of his fractures and open fontanelles they are currently not doing any procedures for that and hope his body will re-absorb the bleeding. The CT of his neck, showed no concerns.  He had a PICC line placed in his arm as well to maintain IV access and for blood draws.  Because of Holden’s age his prognosis is promising.
  Both of them continue to have swelling and increases in swelling that are causing issues, but swelling will hopefully start to go down in a few days. Jolene was able to be taken to see Holden last night and they were able to hold hands. Holden was able to peek through the swelling of one eye to look at her. When Jolene left Holden got upset which was a good sign.


During the night Jolene began having difficulty breathing and coughing. She has had several arterial sites accessed for labs that have continued to fail. Jolene has always been a difficult stick and had poor veins. She was intubated during night and placed back on a ventilator. Although this was upsetting to her because she will not be able to visit Holden she is accepting that she needed it. With intubation they will hopefully be able to control her pain better. She also started NSAIDs this morning to help with swelling and a muscle relaxer to help with pain. She had an X-ray done of her left arm this morning they did not see any fractures but because she is still having a lot of pain in it and the bruising they will look at it with an ultrasound later. 
  Holden has continued to have seizures and more of them closer together when he is stimulated but a good amount of time inbetween.  The plan is to limit touch to only when needed and increase seizure meds, and wait for swelling to go down.  He also had an X-ray of his left arm and they found a buckle break in his elbow. He will have more X-rays done later today looking at his arm again and his legs. 


Jeremy is doing well with all of this and managing to spend time with both of them.  Prayers are much appreciated, we will continue to update everyone on here.  Staff are impressed with the strength they both have. And the also are impressed with Holden’s hair, size, and they love his nose! 

Newest Update

Benefit

Journal entry by Samantha Holicky —

As many of you know Jolene and Jeremy's families are hosting a benefit for them to help pay for equipment for Jolene. I will share the flyer in this update. 

Now on to what you all really want to know; how they are doing... Holden goes to daycare an average of 3 days a week. He is thriving at daycare; watching and playing with the other kids and working on tummy time still, sitting up, holding his head up and eating cereal.  The cereal is new both at home and daycare and we can't tell if it's because he has a cold or he just really doesn't like it but he gets pretty mad about it.  He recently rolled from his back to his tummy but if course we can't get him to do it again. He has prove  to us all that he has a stubborn personality, not sure where he gets that from; maybe both mom and dad. He has also become quite the chatter box lately and really found his voice and his favorite high pitched squeal.  About a month and a half ago he went to Rochester for an EEG to check on seizure activity.  The results showed some seizure like activity and they are working on weaning him off one seizure med although he likely will be on seizure meds all of his life.  He also has therapy once a week to work on him reaching developmental milestones.

Jolene has continued to work hard at improving her strength and working to find useful ways to accomplish things with the mobility she has. She has been out to a few functions also, and that has helped with her spirit. Although with this cold weather it might be a little more work to convince her to leave the house.  Her spinal cord injury has caused her body to not be able to regulate temperature very well and she gets cold way faster than the rest of us. 

Jolene, Jeremy,  Holden, and all of us family continue to be grateful for everyone's support, prayers, and words of encouragement. 
Read More of the journal titled "Benefit"
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