#2nd Chance for Charles

November 20 Update

Hey Vianney, thats an awesome link kare! And identical to Charles. Thanks for that. NCEA exams started this week. In 3 weeks time, hundreds of year 13 students will be celebrating the end of their days as secondary school students and mourning the loss of being carefree teenagers. Most hope to gain employment, many will hope to head to summer beaches, farewell parties and new years concerts, new beginnings are before them, koutou ngaa akonga o Te Kura Maaori o Porirua, Leesha-Rei Apanui Skelton, Stacie Ft Kawana, Ariana Gillespie, Mererangi Moore, Arizona Karena Tutapu Collins, Kieran Timu-Bristowe, Jahnec Taurima, Tamati Kahukiwa, Kingston Kingi Aporo, Jericho Holland-Tihore, Whaita Mclean, kia manawanui mai kia manawanui atu, whaaia te ara e tika ana ki a koutou kaua ko te huarahi a teetahi atu e kore pea e puawai mai moohou tonu.... Day 42-its been 6 weeks since Charles had his last car ride and six weeks exactly since he was admitted in to the High Dependancy Unit at Waikato Hospital. So. Here we are again back in HDU. It seems more spacious and more alive with life. The nurses are a lot busier than in ICU, due to having to manage 2 patients at once as opposed to one to one care and management. We miss the staff in ICU but are of course stoked to be in HDU as it indicates progress is being made.

The changes other than the move and new names to remember are many. HDU & ICU share the same doctors so we do get to see some familiar faces. Charles now has a Speech Language Therapist whose main concern is to help him manage the speech passage, in particular the assessment, diagnosis and treatment of the communication and swallow disorder as the result of GBS. Some pretty traumatic stuff has happened physically to his body, the insertion of tubes for breathing and feeding then the tracheotomy - procedures necessary to keep one alive that take minutes to perform and weeks, months to recover from. He is breathing unaided, I will post up pics as well of what this looks like, but still has the trachy in which is capped. He is learning to cough up into his mouth rather than up and into the trach opening and directly out of the throat. Previously he has had to have secretions suctioned buy inserting a thin tube into the trachy and down the windpipe.

This morning a nutritionist came in to see him. He has lost a considerable amount of weight so they have had to increase his feed amount, they are a little concerned that he is showing signs of dehydration and malnutrition. I have probably only ever seen him skinnier then this once before and then he was undernourished and dehydrated but in a negative way, this current situation is positive, if it can be that at all. As for progress with movement, still weak in terms of muscle control but getting stronger little by little in things like grip, pulling arms in, pushing them out, lifting wrists up, resisting applied pressure on all joints. The hardest part to move is the forearm in a bicep curl movement. Knees are slowly getting movement back but still nothing in the feet or toes..... Getting there.