update on my brother Jay. Here is the current happenings from Emma his fantastic wife. I tell ya she is a trooper.
So… the last few days have been a little tough.

After the elation of moving out of ICU on Friday, Jay suffered a setback and by 4am on Saturday was back in Intensive Care.
A precautionary CT scan taken after he managed to somehow get himself out of bed in the early hours of Saturday morning revealed a small amount of bleeding inside his head and within ten minutes of returning from the CT scan we were back on our way to ICU – back into the same room we had left !!
Over the next day or so it became evident that he also had some fluid on his lungs and by Sunday morning he was having real difficulty breathing, even with an oxygen mask.

Sunday afternoon the decision was taken to sedate him and put him on a ventilator. It’s a pretty scary moment to see someone you love being hooked up to all those tubes and to accept that a machine is needed to simply help them breathe. I shed more than a few tears as I sat at the hospital on my own. Big thanks to the lady who delivers the meals in ICU for spotting that I needed a hug!

The long and the short of it is that he is now doing much better. The bleeding in his head has been monitored, has not increased and is not considered a concern. The fluid on his lungs is possibly a touch of pneumonia, possibly the result of aspirating some vomit (he was pretty sick on Friday night), possibly the side effect of being pumped full of fluids over the last week and possibly the result of another clot forming somewhere in his body. The jury is still out so they are treating him for all of the above. They have detected a hint of a clot forming in his right leg so they have inserted a filter in the main artery that leads to his heart. In case it were to break free the filter will prevent it going to his heart or brain, and he is on antibiotics for the possible pneumonia.

His lungs are now much clearer, and as of tonight when I left the hospital he is breathing on his own, even though he still has the ventilator tube inserted. He is still sedated and the positive side of this episode is that he has been able to get some much needed rest. He is being fed through a tube so he is also able to catch up on some much needed nutrition. For both of these reasons the doctor has decided to wait until tomorrow to take him off the ventilator.

After the shock and the trauma of the setback (they say to expect them you know ……… but it doesn’t make them any easier!) I too have also managed to get some much needed rest. I have spent the last two nights at home knowing that he is stable and sedated and it has really helped me to recharge my batteries. Dani, Laura and Gemma have been wonderful – so helpful and so supportive. They all remembered Mother’s Day yesterday and I even got breakfast cooked for me.

Even though Jay is sedated he is only ‘just under’. He responds to instructions from the nurses and flutters his eyes open now and again. I am pretty sure he can hear me so I have been chatting to him a lot over the last day or so. I have told him that everyone is thinking of him and wishing him better. I tell him about what’s going on in the world and at home and just prattle on and on about everyday stuff. When he wakes up he’ll either tell me it was a comfort to hear my voice or he’ll tell me that he wished I would have shut the hell up! Either way I won’t mind ……… it’ll just be nice to have him back

Emma