Sunday, March 23, 2008

Update on my brother

Steve's still doing great, still up and about walking or sitting up in a chair. We had hoped he was going to go home tomorrow but looks like it will be Tuesday at the earliest.

What we're waiting on is for them to remove a chest tube - a drain in the lung that is helping get rid of fluid and air. Once the drainage slows down enough, they'll take out the tube and he should be able to go home the following day.

For the first few days, they had him on an epidural to manage the pain, but they've removed that and now he's on Percoset. Doesn't do nearly the job at managing the pain, but it's better to have him off the epidural - another step towards going home. Unfortunately, the Percoset makes him sweat like crazy and last night he had horrible nightmares, which I've heard can be a side effect of Percoset. He didn't sleep well at all last night and didn't want to take any more of the Percoset today, so he was in awful pain all day until he finally relented and took some about 4 p.m. I told him to ask for something else when it's time to take his pain meds tonight. Hopefully he'll quit trying to tough it out and ask them for a different drug. He hates to do things like that, is worried about being a hassle to the nurse but they all say he's a model patient and I keep telling him he has to speak up when I'm not there.

Otherwise, he is mobile and has much more use of his right arm than I had expected from what the surgeon told us. Because of that, I'm not worried at all about how he'll do once he is able to go home. Things are looking good.