March 27, 2006
March 27, 2006 | Updates
Well, I think I spoke too soon last week when I said that Samuel was sleeping so well :)! This past week was full of ups and downs. Samuel didn’t sleep well at all Tuesday night and was up much of the time crying, arching his back, kicking his legs and swinging his arms around. Wednesday morning (and eventually clear thru Thursday), I cancelled his therapies because he was too upset to be worked with. He was just upset most of the time and wiggling like crazy. I don’t mind when he wiggles a lot because I figure it’s just him trying to move. But when he is wiggling because he is upset, it is basically impossible to do anything with him. He can’t even sit on your lap or be held.So Wednesday and Thursday in the chamber, he was pretty upset. He gave grandma a run for her money as she tried to keep him on the bed and away from the glass. But Friday, being the good boy that he is, Samuel sat calmly in the chamber and watched Finding Nemo. He is starting to become interested in longer videos than his Signing Time or Baby Einstein videos. He seems to have a longer attention span for them. And I was very grateful he was so calm on Friday since he was in the chamber alone.
Well, Friday he slept from about 3:30 pm until about 12:30 am and there was nothing we could do to wake him. So you can imagine what Friday night was like :)! And Saturday night wasn’t any better. I think he slept a whole of 3 hours that night. But he wasn’t as upset as previous nights, so that was good. Then last night - he slept like a baby! Hooray - because mom was getting pretty beat! We’ll hope he gets back on a good schedule SOON! But I’m not sure that will happen because today he slept on the way to Salt Lake, took a 2 hour nap at hyperbarics and slept most of the way home. I’m pretty sure that’s the whole problem is all the driving messes up his sleep cycles and when he hasn’t had enough sleep, you don’t want to mess with him! Oh, well. This is week #4 of hyperbarics, so it won’t last forever.
Otherwise, we’re good. We still get smiles here and there and Samuel has been healthy in every other way. We’re just pressing along and seeing little improvements along the way. As long as we’re going forward, we can’t complain. Tomorrow, Samuel has an MRI and Thursday a pump refill. Otherwise, we have a regular schedule.
Thanks again for all the prayers and please keep them coming.
Love,
The Jewkes
P.S. It’s been requested that I reexplain hyperbarics, so here’s the quick version. Samuel spends 1 hour in a glass chamber in which the air pressure is 1 1/2 times the regular pressure of the atmosphere. While in the chamber, Samuel breaths only pure oxygen. It’s an old therapy that is used for many things, but brain injury isn’t normally one of them. So in that sense, it’s experimental for Samuel. The theory is that at a higher pressure, the body can take in more oxygen than usual and the oxygen will not only be carried by the blood cells, but also by the plasma in the blood. It is also theorized that oxygen can reach the fluid in the brain ventricles during treatments where it normally never resides. This increased oxygen can help clear out dead cells in the brain and stimulate unused cells to generate and grow and become used cells. The hope is that Samuel’s brain will use the increased oxygen to repair lost connections and use cells that normally would remain dormant. In addition, Penn State recently did a study that showed that hyperbarics increases the number of stem cells in a patient’s blood stream and stem cells are the only cells that can become new brain cells. See the article here http://www.uphs.upenn.edu/news/News_Releases/dec05/O2stmcls.htm. So that’s the short of it!
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