Wednesday Update For Ben

When I entered Ben's room this morning the respiratory therapist was there with him. She had tried to do the weaning process from the ventilator again right before I got there, but once again, Ben could not breathe on his own. That's two days in a row. His vitals were good. He had a very slight fever of 99.6° but he was very out of it this morning and seemed very weak. He could barely keep his eyes open. I sat and held his hand as tears filled my eyes. He would open his eyes now and then and look at me or squeeze my hand. At least he knew I was there. I found out awhile later that the reason he was so tired and out of it was because around 2:00 AM they had given him a little bit of Ativan (Lorazepam) because he was extremely restless. They could not get him to settle down, but at least they did NOT give him morphine. Lorazapam is what they gave me to help calm me down right after I went to ER. They should really think about NOT giving him anything that time of the morning because I think that may be why he could not do the breathing trial today. I kept telling him over and over "Do NOT give up on getting well". Hopefully he was hearing me. They stopped the TPN fluids today on doctor's orders. TPN stands for Total parenteral nutrition in case you want to Google it. This was the fluid (mostly salts and glucose) that they were giving him through his IV before his stomach had started working again. They determined that he was tolerating and absorbing the Fibersource through his NG tube (nasogastric tube) and that is the ONLY way they are giving him nourishment now. This is a GOOD thing. Taking him off of the TPN fluids should help lower his blood sugar levels. His stomach is still very distended, in fact, it looked bigger to me today than it did yesterday. The sore on his bottom is still getting better. It appears to be drying out, which is good. When he was so out of it, I could not do his joint exercises, but he started to wake up when I got back from lunch, so I did them on him then. He was getting mad at me when he woke up more because I kept telling him he could not come home until he got strong and well. He needs to understand that fact. So for a day that started out a little bad, it improved before I left to come home.