Shock therapy?

Things are going as well as can be expected. They have decided to put Ron on a stronger sedation/paralytic since he is wakeful at times and trying to communicate thus tensing his belly which they do not want at all!

They just did a really cool test on him to test the level of sedation...they hook up this little electrode thing to his temple area that sends a shock and they watch the muscle response; docs wanted his to twitch 3 out of 4 times....they up the amp each time they get no response. No response means too much sedation (or not high enough amp to elicit response)...4 out of 4 means not enough sedation...They started at 30 amps and maxed out at 80 with no response, so they switched to his wrist, finally getting 3 out of 4 at 60 amps; tried temple area again...still no response. I suggested we do it on the nurse to make sure it was working properly but...she was not to keen on that. I know Ron would applaud my efforts on his behalf, though!

Good to know he did not require any blood products throughout the night. His white cell count jumped up to 22,000 so they have brought Dr. Liddell (Infectious disease doc) back in and are putting him on big gun antibiotics as a precaution. His creatinine (kidney function) is 1.6, little high but not to bad for what he's just gone through; Albumin (has to do with protein in system) has dropped some.

When he was wakeful, he asked lots of questions--fingerspelling to me, which is quite frustrating to both of us, but we work it out. Wanted to know: if Dr. Shires was pleased with surgery, what they did, how long it took, if there were any bad moments, if we knew anything about his pancreas yet, if he needed blood, telling me that his belly hurts, the tube hurts his throat, his nose itches, his head itches, wanting to know how long he'll be intubated (can you tell he really hates that thing in his throat!); who had I called (specifically wanting to make sure the Cronies had been contacted), and on and on...bad thing is, he shouldn't remember any of this(actually that's a good thing) and will probably ask the same questions numerous times.
Even with all the drugs he's on he's still thinking of others...wanted to know if someone talked to his Mom & Dad, if the boys are ok, what time it was, whether the boys had been able to see him yet.. And the last thing he spelled out was PRAISE GOD! Indeed...PRAISE GOD!

Please add this to your list of things to pray for Ron:

against nightmares...these paralytics/sedatives are known to cause some pretty disturbing nightmares I would love for him to bypass these!
against tension/ pulling in belly area...would not be good for healing process
Albumin level will increase
that he will not fight the rest he needs
against blood clots (since he's had the two during the course of all this, he's at higher risk to get more)

I almost forgot, when I first arrived this morning, they had just changed the wound vac AND REMOVED DRAIN TUBE!!!! He is down to having only the tube from wound vac and Gastric tube (counting belly area only...not counting NG tube, vent or catheter).

Thanks faithful ones!