Sylvia's Journal

Today was a really hard day – Axel’s surgery was postponed because he woke very confused, more so than usual.Tess was there with him in the morning, expecting to see him off to surgery, but he had had a fitful night, ripped his splint and bandages off – he was very upset, and yelling – so today he was groggy, and mumbling a lot and confusing his dreams for reality (some say this may be from morphine but he hasn’t been on morphine for some time now). Tessa called me at home, very upset, so I raced to Worcester (with Anne staying home with Sylvia). When I got there, Axel was restlessly sleeping, sleeptalking, fidgeting – it was unusual behavior for the middle of the day. His nurse was soulless and had no bedside manner to speak of with a nervous twitch that was rather unsettling. He manhandled dad’s arm when trying (unsuccessfully) to put it back on and didn’t respond when dad introduced himself. We don’t like him and made sure that he won’t come back to Dad’s watch.

So this weird behavior lasted for a while, but toward evening – about 4ish – he began to become lucid again. He had a catscan and from that point on was pretty much with it. He will most likely have another MRI tonight – as ordered by the neurological team that came in and evaluated him. They performed a bunch of tests with tuning forks and flashlights and rubber hammers and math questions. They determined a few things. 1) he is having a really hard time with concentration. 2) the (small) part of his skull that he fractured is very near his right ear mechanisms – so this is why he is having trouble hearing out of this ear, and why there has been occasional bleeding from this ear. 3) he is seeing double, with the image on the right appearing a bit higher than the one on the left – when they did the flashlight test the right eye was not in sync with the left – it was staggering a bit behind . This is one of the pieces of information that they have that can’t be explained by the injuries they know about – which is why they called for more scans.

To deal with this for now, they gave him an eye patch, so he looks like a pirate. We had him practicing his pirate speak after his dinner smoothie (mango/orange/apple/pear). He got a cold washcloth for his head around the same time as the patch – so it was pretty piratey in the room, I have to say. When the orthopedic surgeon came in to check in on him, and left without commenting on his pirate look, dad said ‘I can’t believe he didn’t comment on my pirate outfit!’ I must say, I can’t believe it either. This is the doctor, by the way, who also told us that the initial cat scan of his head (the one from today) didn’t show any huge glaringly obvious things wrong – which is a good thing. the bleeding hasn’t gotten any worse. They have to do an MRI to see better, I guess.

Tonight they had a really great ‘babysitter’ as she called herself – someone who looks after him/just sits there with him to make sure he doesn’t try to rip his splint off again. They had some fun, back and forth banter – it’s true that laughter is good medicine. Hearing laughter and laughing himself really seems to change his mood. She told us that there will be someone with him all night and through the morning, just to make sure he makes it through the night OK and doesn’t have another fit. I think his fits are brought on when he is all alone, wakes up in the dark and is confused about where he is with no one to help him, or calm him. So – hopefully having Tessa there again until midnight or so and then having a nurse by his side all night will allow him to get a good nights sleep (which I doubt he’s gotten since he was checked in).

It was a long day – I am glad it’s over. Tomorrow I will take mum to Worcester for her follow up appointment, and we will get to have a family reunion with dad and Tess. I can’t keep my eyes open anymore – I’m sure I forgot something, but it’ll have to wait.