The Routine

Day turns into night, night turns into day and so goes the routine.  I cannot imagine today how I survived on so little sleep back then.  I would always arrive at the hospital between 6:00 and 7:00 am (never any later).  I’d stay until midnight, go home and return again in the morning.  When you have someone recovering from a TBI, with memory loss, you want to make sure that your schedule is consistent.  Before he moved from SICU, I wanted to be there to make sure he survived to the next day.  Once he was stable and moved to the respiratory unit, I wanted to make sure that he was comfortable and that he was getting the proper care.  I also wanted to make sure that he would remember me.  Everyone said he did.  I knew that he didn’t.  He always seemed to watch every move I made, but his eyes just had such a blank look in them.  

This period of time was not a good one.  Thankfully visitors were limited.  My husband’s brain was going through the reboot stage.  He was in an excessive amount of pain from all the broken bones healing.  So he remained on massive amounts of painkillers and sedatives.  He still could not breathe on his own and he did not like all the tubes attached to him at all.  It was a daily struggle to keep his hand away from pulling at them.  And yes I said hand, as in one.  The doctors discovered that along with the initial brain injury, he also had several bleeds in his head from the impact.  One of those bleeds ruptured and caused a stroke-like syndrome consistent with the level of TBI my husband had.  His right arm was not able to move and they just weren’t sure about the rest of him.  So we all just settled into the new routine on this new unit waiting to see what each new day would bring.