More pain and transfering to the ICU

Thursday Dad was still feeling a good amount of pain. He was great lying flat, but the moment he would try to dangle his legs he would have severe pain his legs would shake. They repeated the MRI to get a better look at his thoracic and lumbar spine to make sure there was nothing new causing the pain. Even though he was receiving a large amount of pain medications he was still feeling pain. They still don't know why. When the floor doc came to check on him, Dad told him he was still in pain so they increased his pain medication dose. Thursday night he was in so much pain he could even empty his bladder. He had a restless night, wanting to get up and go home. The only problem was that he couldn't walk.

This morning they called mom early to ask her to come to the hospital quickly. Overnight Dad spiked a fever and when his day nurse got there, she found him unresponsive. Mom rushed to the hospital, and both her and Dr. Kazhdan were shaking him trying to wake him but nothing worked. They gave him a medication to reverse the narcotics, but that really didn't work. They were so concerned they transferred him to the ICU and put him on CPAP, which an assistive breathing device to help his lungs stay inflated. It looks like a fighter jet pilot mask and sounds like Darth Vader. When they put the CPAP on him he finally responded, disoriented to what happened and confused why everyone was fussing over him. When I got there from work he was awake, no longer feverish and apologetic for scaring everyone. He was talking and more like himself than Thursday. Visiting hours in the ICU are limited, so Mom and I left since they closed. When we got back at 12 pm when they opened, we found him unresponsive again. His arms were weak, we would talk to him and he wouldn't respond. We would shake and touch him and he wouldn't respond. I opened his eyes and he wouldn't wake up. His nurse came in a shook and shouted at him, and he woke up, looked around and feel back to sleep. His nurse thought he was just in a deep sleep. But mom and I knew that there was still something not right. We kept trying to talk to him, to see if he would stay awake and he wouldn't. We told the nurse again that he wouldn't wake up. He came and gave him another dose of the medication to reverse the narcotics. Dad hadn't had any pain medications, but he was still not responding. When they gave him the dose, he didn't wake up quickly, as he should have. It wasn't for 5 minutes that he finally woke up and wanted the mask off mad and disoriented for all the fuss. This time he stayed awake. He was able to come off the CPAP and was able to eat. This is great, because the alternative was to stick a tube down his nose to his stomach to feed him. He is now back to his usual self, making jokes and giving everyone a hard time.

He did get blood today and they are checking everywhere for an infection. He is on 4 different antibiotics and his fever is gone. He hasn't had pain medication all night since midnight and has had medications to reverse the narcotic effects. Even with all this, he is in no pain. His legs no longer hurt. Strange, yes! The original plan was to keep him in the ICU for 2 days then send him back to the floor. But since he is back to his usual self, they are thinking of sending him back to the floor, i.e. a regular room tomorrow. In the meantime he is placing his orders for breakfast, which includes sweets. It is such a relief to see him back to normal- he really had us scared.