Quintin: May 18:

What Happened to Quintin?

On April 26, 2010 Quintin experienced what may have been a cerebellar stroke. While crossing the street with his best friend, Quintin fell backward and hit the back of his head on a curb. He was unconscious for several moments, then was able to walk, with assistance, the short distance back into the building. After showing signs of a serious concussion he was taken in an ambulance to Legacy Emanuel hospital.

He was in the ICU at Emanuel until his 29^th birthday, June 5, when he was stable enough to transfer to the hospital’s Trauma Care Unit (TRACU). After nearly a month in TRACU he moved to Vibra Specialty Hospital in Portland.

At the end of October Quintin moved to an adult foster care home in Vancouver, WA. He has excellent around the clock nursing care from a team of people who believe in his potential to make positive progress toward recovery.

At times he seems alert and “awake,” other times not. He still has a tracheostomy tube in his throat and is sometimes on a ventilator to assist with his breathing. He is able to breathe independently; when he's on the vent it's usually there as a precautionary back up when he has a fever or needs his energy for something else that's going on. The trach does not allow air to pass over his vocal cords, but speech therapists can periodically check to see if he’s made progress towards being able to speak.

When he fell his occipital bone was broken, causing a brain bleed. The bleeding obscured the injured area, so we may never know the cause of the fall. It took several months for the internal swelling around the injury to subside. Now that the swelling is gone, CT scans have shown that there are damaged areas in the cerebellum, pons, and brain stem. Typically, brain tissue does not grow back, but it IS possible for connections in the brain to reform, and that’s what we are patiently waiting for now.

For some time now they’ve had him alternating between a standard respirator and a more intense one called a VDR. The intense one was to help agitate the gunk around his lungs that he can’t get out by himself, so the broncoscopies and trach suction can clear as much out as possible. It sounds like, with the help of antibiotics, he’s beaten the infection. He hasn’t had a broncoscopy in several days and he’s been on the standard respirator for the last two days: all of this is good.

His fever has been up and down; most likely because of his body dealing with those lung issues. When the temp goes up they treat it with Tylenol and ice packs, trying to let his body do as much of the work as possible.
They did a spinal tap (yes, really) over the weekend to make sure there’s nothing unwanted in his cerebral-spinal fluid and so far the tests have all come back ok. They’ll keep watching that as we move forward.

Like I said, we’re really just waiting at this point for him to give us new signs of patching himself up. This could go on for a long time, so we’re hoping he’ll be as phenomenal in beating this as he is in most things in life.

Quintin

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