Quintin: May 25:

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.

Q had some set backs this week.

On Wednesday the 19th his fever spiked (to about 104). They did a series of CT scans to figure out what was causing the fever. Found a couple things:
1) Even though he had been doing well with the standard respirator, there was a lot of build up in his lungs. Apparently having stuff in your lungs that you can’t clear yourself means that the lungs are partially collapsed, so it’s been referred to that way too.
2) Some small blood clots had begun to form in his lungs. While this isn’t a good thing, it’s a very common occurrence when you’re on your back and inactive for this long.
To address these issues they did a series of broncoscopies, put him back on the VDR (the stronger respirator), and started him on two broad-spectrum antibiotics and a strong blood thinner.

The chest infection turned out to be staph again, so within a couple days they took him off the broad-spectrum antibiotics and started a new, targeted one (that’s different from the last cycle, since that irritated his skin).

Very early Monday morning (the 24th) his night nurse found that his pupils were not responding as they had been. She immediately called Dr. Chen (the neurosurgeon) and he called Dale and Beverly in to the hospital to approve another surgery. There was some bleeding and clotting in his cerebellum, likely caused by the blood thinner (which they immediately stopped giving him). Dr. Chen was pleased with how the surgery went, and said the cerebellum is “very forgiving.” He placed one of the drains back in Q’s head to relieve intracranial pressure, and the ICP numbers have been good ever since. No word on how long the drain will need to stay in.

He was sedated for the first 24hrs after surgery, but had his eyes open earlier today. He’s moving his head quite a bit, especially when someone touches his face. From what the doctors and nurses are saying, even though there were some scary days this week, it’s very possible that he’ll be back to where he was last week within a few days, and we just have to hope the next steps move him forward from there.

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