The first 24 hours.

It has been almost 24 hours since Jerry arrived at Toronto Western Hospital. I am writing from the ICU waiting room where Mom and I have spent most of the day. Here is what has happened so far:

At 7:30pm on Wednesday, EMS arrived on-scene to find Jerry lying unconscious at the bottom of a flight of 7 front-door steps. It is unclear to us who called EMS.

At about 10:00pm Mom was called by Cambridge Memorial Hospital – we arrived there sometime soon after that.

Upon arrival we were informed of his condition and told that he would soon be transferred to a Neuro Unit in London, Hamilton or Toronto.

We arrived at Toronto Western Hospital at exactly the same time as Jerry and we were able to pop in to see him quickly before he was taken for a CT scan.

The night was long and lonely. Empty hospitals are not comforting places to be. At 6:30am we were informed that brain surgery would be necessary to relieve the pressure on Jerry’s brain caused by the hematoma. Surgery, at this point, was a foregone conclusion based on Jerry’ condition.

By noon, however, we were told that Jerry had improved to the point that surgery was no longer a certainty and would only be necessary if his condition worsened.

Jerry is currently being assessed every hour. His sedative medication is temporarily halted and he is allowed to surface into a state of semi-consciousness at which time his reactions to stimuli are tested. His medication is then quickly returned and Jerry relaxes back into comfortable pain-free unconsciousness.

At this point as long as there is no change in his ability to respond to stimuli, the news is good and surgery is unecessary.

~~~~

Colin