Mickey's Accident 5/5/11

Here's the account of our first full day at Doernbecher's PICU. There are some pictures of Little Man hooked up to all the machines and IV's and such. So, please don't feel you have to read it if that sort of thing will upset you.
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THURSDAY
It took a while to get Mickey's body temperature down to where they wanted it. It was actually about four in the morning before he reached the proper temperature. They started out with sedatives and then because his shivers kept his temp up they added muscle blockers. This period of time was so hard for us. We couldn't do much for him and we didn't know anything. We didn't know if he was still in there or how the accident had affected him. They wanted him as calm and quiet as possible during the cooling so while we could hold his hand, we weren't to stroke him or talk to him too much.

Later on Thursday, they hooked him up to an EEG. I was really upset when I learned that an EEG would be done so soon. I had thought it would be done after the cooling was complete and that we would have more time not knowing how he was. At that point, not knowing, though terrible and so very hard was better than knowing the worst. I was truly afraid that they would hook him up and all that we would see would be flat lines. I was so happy to see lines that I cried and finally admitted my fears of the EEG to Andrew. A few hours after they hooked up the EEG, Andrew left with a co-worker, Jim, to go get some things from home. I wanted my camera. I kept telling myself that as a scrapbooker and photo happy mom, I had thousands of pictures of Mickey. And every time I told myself that, I thought, "It's not enough". I told a nurse that I was having Andrew bring my camera and she asked if I was sure I wanted to remember this. I told her that I wanted to get the picture of the actual accident out of my head and I'd much rather remember this than that.

Mickey's neurologist came by to give us the results of the the EEG. Andrew was still gone so I stepped outside Mickey's room to talk to him alone. He told me the first really good news we had heard. He said that there was more there than he had expected there to be. He said that Mickey showed no sign of seizures (something they had been concerned about during the cooling down process), that his brain was showing normal sleep/wake patterns and that his cortex (the part of the brain that is most affected by lack of oxygen injuries) was responding to all the drugs in his system the way a normal, healthy cortex would. I was so happy that I flung myself on the neurologist and gave him a hug! I'm thinking neurologist's don't get hugged often as he looked startled and then a little pleased.

After that things just started getting better. Andrew came back and I told him the good news. I grabbed that camera and took pictures of our little guy and of the EEG readout. Then they took off the EEG stuff because they felt that he didn't need monitoring anymore.

We were still upset and worried about Mickey and his future but at least we had some good news. I asked our doctor if the worst option, that of not taking him home was off the table and she said that barring some unforseen incident it was!

I was also able to get on Facebook and let our friends and family know what was going on. Here's the note I posted.

For those of you who don't know, our son Mickey was involved in a freak accident that cut off oxygen to his brain. I revived him and he was Life Flighted to Dornbecher's. He is being chilled now to allow his brain time to heal and to prevent swelling. They will start to warm him and take him off some of the meds that are preventing him from moving at around four this morning.
We have had some encouraging news from the neurologist regarding his EEG and I believe that it was prayers and the amazing staff at Dornbecher's that are helping so much with that.
If you and everyone you know could pray for our Mickey, our son, we would be forever indebted. He is our light, he is my soul and we love him desperately.

The response from Facebook was amazing and beautiful. People from all over the world were now on our side, praying for our little guy. Whenever I felt like it was all too much to take and wanted to cry I would head out to the computers bring up Facebook and cry happy tears instead of sad.

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So that's it for Thursday. I'll be posting the rest of the stay over a few days. This is a really important event in our lives and I'm glad I'm able to record it here.