Day 3: in intensive care

Simon had a lively morning. When I arrived at 10am he had been washed and shaved and looked quite beautiful. He was communicative, using his hands and a lot of voice, though no words yet. He gave me a hug with his left arm which made me feel so good. I tried him with the IPod, and he even managed to put an earphone into his left ear by himself. Before long he was unhappy with my choice of Bob Dylan, so we switched to b.b.king 'when you're weary'. He was wanting to manipulate the IPod himself, and got very frustrated with this, it really does take two hands, and the screen kept going dark before he could get anywhere. Because this was frustrating him I took the IPod away. I will try again and see if I can find a mounting for the Ipod so that it does not need to be hand-held. There is a limit to how much kit you can take into intensive care. I have been looking for a 'stress ball' to keep his right hand from clawing. I just cannot find the thing that I am looking for, it needs to be big enough to keep his hand almost straight, and it must not bounce because the IC staff will trip over it. Any ideas?



At around midday, Simon became very agitated and was 'shouting'. I realised that he could be in pain, he has had a bad back. This was a good guess, and so the nursing staff arranged some strong pain killer. This turned out to be a little too strong and sent him to sleep (although it meant that they were able to reinsert his feeding tube without him suffering the experience). During this sleep, Simon stopped breathing. He has been snoring for England the last 24 hours, and they had been quizzing me about whether this was normal. I said it was, and that is normal. It transpires that Simon has been suffering from sleep apnoeia, and that this is strongly connected to strokes. When he is asleep he sometimes stops breathing. So they had to put a breathing machine on him which involved a very tight and uncomfortable mask over his face. He is very unhappy about this and keeps trying to pull it off. I am hoping that tomorrow they will be able to take this away.



I have been trying to figure out a way to help him to communicate with us, and my task this evening is to create a board with words that he can point to. I am just trying to think of the appropriate range of words and phrases that I need e.g. I am in pain, I am tired, Clear Off etc. Any suggestions here would be jolly helpful.



I have told Simon all about the conference news, and passed on all of your good wishes. His mum, Shirley, is enroute, and will leave London for Singapore this evening.



Thanks for the lovely comments left here, I will read them all to Simon in the morning.



Love Marian xx