Well, we have been at Hook for 5 days. It has been an adjustment but everyone has been good to us. Therapy has been stepped up and Jim is busy most of the day. But the weekend is very quiet in comparison, and pretty boring for him. Although, Sunday was fun for him. Steve Korn, an old friend of ours, now living in Arizona, and his sister Linda and his mom, visited with Jim and I. (Hi Helen!. Thank you for all your support) Also, our son Andrew and his family came a little later. Jim loves seeing all of them. He REALLY enjoyed that.
Jim entertained all. It was good to see him laugh.
There are two thing you could all pray for this week. One, Jim should be getting a cat scan of his neck by the end of the week. If it is not healed, surgery may be his last hope. The other is, it is possible he will have his first pass to go out with me on the week-end. This is exciting, but a little scary, too.
I will let you know how it all goes. (Hello to all at the VA, Parkview and St Joe)
Blessings,
Sue
The diary of the progress of Jim Maley
Dad with Alena at Christmas
The story as we know it...
On Friday morning (Jan. 19th) around 10:50am, i recieved a call from my brother Joe telling me that he needed me at the house. I asked him what for and he told me that dad had hurt himself somehow...he had a black eye, his nose was bleeding and was "a little beat up". I immediatly got into my car and started heading that way. I called Joe back and asked him for more details and he told me that he was having a hard time getting dad up. I told him to call the EMS and he said that he thought Jason had already done that and he was on his way. When i pulled up, i saw the EMS was already there. I walked in and i saw Jason, Anna, Joe and several EMS people along with dad sitting on a gurney. They imediately took dad out in the EMS...not knowing what was wrong...just that something really wasnt right. We followed the EMS to parkview ER and had to go wait. Mom met us there as she flew across town to get there. We had to wait a long time (it seemed like days!) before we were told what was going on. The chaplain kept coming out to "brief"us...but thats all it was, a "brief". Finally, the ER doctor called the family together and told us the news...dad has a broken neck and he is bleeding in and on his brain on both sides....this is very serious. "Its a bad deal" the ER doc kept on saying, but we had to wait until the surgeon would come in and take a look at the CT scan before we could find out for certian what was wrong. Dr. Young finally came in and said that he had looked at dad and his scan. Dr. Young was very "matter of fact" with us which was good. We needed that! He told us very similar things to what the ER doctor told us. He said that dad had broke his neck, C2 to be exact. He also said that he was bleeding in several areas in his brain. He needed brain surgury immediatly. On a scale of one to ten...with ten being the worst...dad was a "plus 10". Dad went into surgury and was there for 3.5 hours or so...he came out of surgury fine but we found out the damage was worse than they had thought. They had to remove some of the damaged area and he would be on life support. We were told that the next 3-10 days are life and death...or very critical.
What we think what happend is something as follows: Dad was sleeping down in the basement which is a normal thing. Between 8:30am and 10:30am, he tried going upstairs. This info is a little sketchy because we werent there, but based on some of the info that we have seen, we think that he tripped on the stair going up and fell...hitting his right eye on the stereo and then hitting face first on the ground. This created the damage that we are aware of.
We spoke with the cardiologist today and found out that dad has also had a heart attack with in the last eight days, but they have not figured out exactly when. There is a thought that this might have caused the fall be we are uncertain.
Dad is in stable but "second to second" condition. If and when dad comes out of the "coma" state, there will likely be many months of therapy that needs to be done, plus until the brain issues are resolved, they can not even think about looking at his broken neck.
To sum it all up...dad is in very bad condition. We thank you all for all of your prayers and support and all of the food and gifts. Your love for my dad and our family is amazing and we are extremely grateful. We will continue to update you as we know more. Please continue to pray!! Pray for dad (jim) for healing. Pray for mom (sue) that she can continue to be strong. We do know that we most likely havent seen the worst yet. This is when we need your prayers the most. Please feel free to enter your thoughts on this blogspot as we will update you as we know more. We are very thankful for the love you all have shown.
4 comments:
Hi Sue,
Steve realllly enjoyed getting to
see you guys :)
So glad the Lord blessed you all with a beautiful day to be outside :)
Will be praying specifically for
your requests listed here :)
love you!
Helen
Praying daily...
Sue,
Oh, my God, how is everything going! We all, here at VA miss you and Jim so much! Is he adjusting well? We are worried, naturally, we all have become so close. I'm sure you are watching over things and making sure he's okay. Our unit has not at all been the same... We are praying for all of you and again we miss you very much!!!!! Thank you for all the nice things you said about us in my previous reading! Thinking about you all and missing you much!!
Sandi
Dear Jim and Sue,
Well, you are one step closer to coming home. What an amazing trip! Congratulations on your new granddaughter. We'll all be excited to meet her. We will pray for the scan and hope that the neck is healing. A date, just the two of you . . . Considering the road you have been on for the past 6 months, that is almost unbelievable. We hope that all will go well and that after all the fears and planning, it will actually be an enjoyable time. You all continue to be in our prayers and our thoughts.
Ron and Minda
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