It depends on who you ask

Yesterday I got a call from the CICU doctor who I have been dealing with since dad went in. He's not part of the surgery team, he's one of the floor doctors. He delivered a fairly grim assessment of what was going on with dad. Dad's responsiveness really reach its high point in the middle of last week. Since then, he said, his alertness has been going down hill. The doctor remains mystified by this. At the same time the liver and kidneys are not improving. He recommended I fly out and see for myself, but felt like sooner or later difficult decisions would need to be made. I was fairly discouraged by this conversation, as you might expect. Couple this with repeated failures to reach dad's nurse (I seemed to have a knack for calling when they were on a break, or in the middle of something) and I was unclear. I talked to a friend of dad's this morning who has been going to see him fairly often recently, and told her the doctor seemed to think he was slipping back into the coma. She said she would go this afternoon and report what she saw.

But then I got through to the nurse this afternoon. Dad's doing pretty well. He's been breathing on his own (with the tube still in place) for about 5 hours. He opens his eyes, squeezes hands, generally responds. It is true that the liver and kidney seemed to have plateaued and they are looking into this, but there has been no decline there. This seemed an entirely more upbeat and positive assessment than what I got from the doctor. In fact they have scheduled dad to begin physical therapy and occupation therapy, another positive sign. I have a plan to get out there in a couple of weeks and here in lies the problem of dealing with things from across the country. I don't have the first hand sense that comes with seeing him myself. I think I want to leave a tablet with skype on it there, so that they can show me dad and maybe I can get a better sense.