Update on my dad

For those of you that I haven't had a chance to contact yet, on Thursday my dad fell off the second story roof while cleaning off leaves. He is in trauma ICU at OHSU with 2 collapsed lungs, virtually all of his ribs are cracked or fractured, and a broken pelvis. He has been intubated (a tube is helping him breathe) and he is heavily sedated.

The good news-
Yesterday they took out the left chest tube, which means his left lung is doing well. They also switched his right lung from the bubbling filter to water suction, so if it drains less than 100 today that tube will come out as well. He is responding to us when we are there, even though it is only in the form of moving feet and hands. His sense of humor is clearly intact still though, because whenever my mom teases him his feet start moving rapidly :) When my mom and sister were there yesterday, they said he opened his eyes and was clearly paying attention to them.

He now (as of yesterday) has an epidural in his back that is basically numbing up his entire ribcage. The goal is that without all of the pain, he will breathe better and be able to taken off of the ventilator and the heavy sedation/pain meds.

The bad news-
We had hoped the ventilator would be taken out yesterday, but yesterday afternoon they told us he now has pneumonia. He spiked a high fever overnight and they have had to up the oxygen they give him and have the ventilator help him breathe a bit more. As of this morning his fever was very high again last night, so they have started some broad-spectrum antibiotics until the culture results come back. They said he is still responsive, and the antibiotics seem to be starting to work. It is looking unlikely that they will remove the ventilator before I leave on Sunday, which unfortunately means I won't get to talk to him.

As scary as all of this has been, the nurses and doctors assure us that things are going fairly well and that 60% of patients get pneumonia. They have no idea when he might get moved out of ICU and when (if all goes perfectly) he'd be back home. It's looking like it's going to be a few months though. Things are all still very touch-and-go, and we're hoping that the pneumonia gets under control quickly. We'll hopefully know more by this afternoon when the latest CT and x-ray results come back.

I'd like to thank all of you for your thoughts and prayers. It's amazing to see the outpouring of support...you never know how many people care about you until something like this happens and the phone rings off of the hook with people sending their good wishes. I'll try and keep you all updated as things change, but it's very slow going right now.