Nothing new

It's 11:14pm and Chris and I are staying in Dad's ICU room tonight. The nurse was VERY thankful I stayed to help out. He's just too confused to not be watched constantly. It all started about 24 hours ago and all day has been an uphill battle for him. If pleurisy, an aortic aneurysm and pneumonia weren't enough, just add the delirium or ICU psychosis to the mix and it's a disaster for him. Can he please catch a break? Poor guy. It has been very rough to see him forget everything and get so frustrated and agitated with it. The surgery is put off for the time being, they are controlling his blood pressure with about 4 medications a few IV drips and they doubled his antibiotics tonight.

Dad is still very very confused and agitated and nothing seems to be working. They think that maybe it's the steroids, pneumonia or even the Ativan they gave him the night before where the cause and he had a possible reaction to them. They were hoping that he would come out of it by earlier tonight if that was the case, but that didn't happen. So they think he is having delirium. It's actually quite common in ICU patients. I deal with it quite often at work but it's so different now since it's my Dad. He doesn't recognize us half the time and thinks its 2006 and he is in Ft Myers. But he can tell you his name, birth date and some other random stuff. They told us to keep reminding him of what day it is, and who is family is and calm him with pictures and let him see the sun out the window and it should help a little. So tonight he told me he was bored, so I busted out the wedding cruise videos and watched them with him. He remembered some, but not all and I had to remind him about a lot. He does remember Nolan though(thank god). He looked at me and said he was so confused by everything and wished he could go back to the time before Nolan. Awwwww, I do too!

They started a new medication and it seemed to calm him down a bit. Can you imagine what he is going through right now? He's been stuck in an ICU bed for 3 days, with alarms and monitors, people telling you what you can and can not do and now being restrained and have to lay on his back? It's hell. I know all he wants to do is get up and move around. He was trying to convince me earlier that the football game was a joke because they were using last years game to make points, BUT he was making the calls as he watched the game so at least he was on top of his football. I really do think he misses his DVR remote, the hospital has nothing on TV...lol

So for the first time in 24 hours, he's finally catching some sleep. I hope this lasts the night, he sure does need it. Mom is doing as good as you can expect her too, she is just overwhelmed with everything, and is in shock that things have changed so drastically in the past 48 hours.