Test Results

Daniel was taken to the ICU late Wednesday night, and he started displaying a behavior called 'posturing'. The cardiologist explained that the muscles in his arms and legs were contracted into a very odd and unnatural position. His toes were pointed forward and turned inward, and his hands curled in and turned back. The doctors explained that his was very very concerning, and a sign of serious brain damage. They told me that because this was happening, they were going to treat him as if there was damage. One thing that is proven to help patients in this situation is something called 'cooling' where they lower the patient's body temperature and keep it there for 24 hours. For some reason (they said it is very complicated to explain) this preserves some of Daniel's body functions while his brain is hurting. They wrapped him in cooling 'blankets' that ran cold water all over him. A normal core temperature is between 37 and 38 degrees C, and they wanted Daniel down at 33 degrees C.

Before they could start cooling Daniel, they did a CAT scan that showed no signs of head trauma. We sort of already knew that, because Daniel didn't fall, but that is great!

In order to get Daniel to hold completely still for the CAT scan, they administered a paralytic, which froze all of his skeletal muscles. This also stopped the posturing, and Daniel has not showed signs of posturing since. The doctors are very positive about that!

Daniel started on the cooling regime, and it took about 4 hours to get his body temperature that low. He was shivering a lot, and the nurses said that he was as cold as if they had thrown him out naked in the snow for a few days. Daniel hates being cold, so he had to have been grouchy about that! The shivering was concerning, and they tried to up his sedation levels to stop him from doing that, but it didn't work. They were mostly concerned that the shivering was actually seizing or seizure activity, so they placed Daniel on an anti seizure drug.

Dad flew in from Texas early Thursday morning.

They did an EEG on Daniel on Thursday morning. An EEG measures siezure activity in the brain. The EEG did show that their was seizure activity, so they added an anti seizure drug to his medications. At this point Danie's brain activity was very low because he was so cold.

We had quite a bit of waiting on Thursday, because the doctors wanted an MRI, but couldn't do it until Daniel was warm again. They did not expect Daniel to wake up on Thursday at all because he was so heavily sedated. They also couldn't take him off of the cooling system until he had been cold for 24 hours, so he couldn't start warming himself up until 6:00 am Friday morning.

Friday morning they took the cooling blankets off, and Daniel warmed up within a few hours. He actually got too warm because he developed a fever. They actually just found out that he has an infection in his lungs, but they have been treating him with antibiotics since last night.

They did an MRI as soon as Daniel was warm enough, and it showed no concerns. A member of Danie's bishopric is actually the radiologist who reads the MRI reports, and he brought in his partners so they could all 3 read the report and make sure that Daniel is getting the best treatment possible. The MRI would let us know if there was any damage to the brain from something like a stroke, or if there is swelling. They also said that the MRI could show if there was damage from oxygen loss. There was none that showed, but that kind of damage doesn't show for 3 days sometimes, so they will do another MRI on Sunday or Monday to look again. They might also do another MRI today (Saturday)

They did a second EEG on Friday, and that showed no signs of seizing, so they were very excited that the seizure medication is working. We were also told that the brain activity was very normal in the second EEG, except for the fact that every once in a while the activity will just stop for a little while.

We will post more information about his test after this.