Thursday, November 12, 2015

Acquired Brain Injury Day 20

Another series of setbacks today, Colleen fainted early in the morning and was unresponsive to the nursing staff, so a CT scan and other tests were done and it was discovered that her blood pressure was too low. 

I was told the reason for the low blood pressure was because the hospital was giving her medication to keep the vessels in the brain from vibrating. Unfortunately, one of the side-effects of that medication was to lower her Blood Pressure. To counter the lowering of her Blood Pressure, they had to put her on medication that would raise her Blood Pressure. The trick was to keep these two medications in balance, and in order to help in this process, Colleen had to drink lots of water. Colleen does not like to drink much water normally, so she did not respond well to this advice. 

The fact is she did not drink enough water, putting her medications out of balance, which caused the fainting. Another fact that contributed to the current problem was that  according to the medical team I  had overtired her by keeping her out the day before. As they say all good things in moderation.

By the afternoon she was responding and everything was looking up but she had another fainting spell.  The plan was that she would be moved within two days to the Caulfield Hospital for rehabilitation so my hope was that these setbacks were minor and that she would be moved as per the plan. The medical team appeared to believe that these setbacks were not a major problem, but I was still not sure. However, the plan is still to move Colleen in two days if everything continues as it is now.

I mentioned earlier, that the Insurance company would not cover rehabilitation, so making the move to rehabilitation was a difficult decision. The Neurosurgeons would not allow her to fly in her current condition, without help. The medical team at the Alfred, believed the best course of action was for Colleen to go into rehabilitation and so I agreed.

Colleen still had no real short-term memory and she was still very weak. The medical team believed that she needed to have more time to recover.  We had made a connection with the Hospital Liaison Sarah, who worked with us and she referred us to the Alfred Foundation Board/ who accepted Colleen into Rehabilitation without charge. 

I am very thankful to Sarah for her hard work on our behalf and to the Foundation and Caulfield Hospital Brain Injury Ward, for accepting Colleen. The move to rehabilitation was scheduled for the 15th of November and then with everything going well, Colleen would be released by the end of November and we would be cleared to fly home, so we might make it home for Christmas.

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