Day 2

Thank you so much for the encouraging words many of you left after my post yesterday! It does help to know so many people are praying for us. The accident details as I understood them from the police officer are that Ryan was in the far right lane of travel (on his scooter) and the vehicle next to him stopped to turn off. Another vehicle, noticing only the stopped vehicle, proceeded to cross the right lanes of travel, and Ryan ran right into the side of her car. He had the right of way and would have had no reason to stop. While I haven't seen his scooter, I can only guess what it must look like after finding pieces of it in the clothes bag I received.

As for todays events, I woke up early, but Kerensa understandably slept in awhile. When we made it to the hospital, Ryan still hadn't seen the doctor. In obvious pain, he implored me to free his hands, which I knew I could not do. His neurosurgeon doctor came in shortly thereafter and removed the neck brace. Ryan complained of pain in his neck, head, and pretty much everywhere, but the doctor advised he would receive nothing stronger than tylenol because of the brain injury. Apparently, you can't monitor a person's mental capacity when that person is taking narcotics.

The doctor reported that the morning's CAT scan mirrored the one from the night before. This is good in the sense that his condition hadn't worsened, but the bruising/blood hadn't subsided any either. The doctor further told Ryan to start thinking about his recovery as a matter of weeks, not days. I did not find such news very encouraging. We learned, however, that Ryan could be moved from ICU that day, and that in fact happened around 4:30.

He managed to sleep quite well after a minuscule midday meal (his first since lunch yesterday), but the transport 8 levels up put a kink in that sleeping span. His older sister arrived with her son around the same time, so Ryan was able to interact with them. As soon as he was in a position to have all of us gathered around his bed, he wanted to know where Kerensa was. She was not allowed in ICU, and Ryan wanted to see her. He phased back into sleep, and upon wakening, he asked me again where she was. His mentation had improved at least incrementally from yesterday, but he continued to say and ask the same things. Once he got some slighly better pain meds, I left to pick up Kerensa and some dinner.

While he did sleep for a little while during my absence, his pain had only increased when I returned. We anxiously waited for the next round of pain pills, but after their administration, he continued to feel the same. It was hard leaving him this evening because of the obvious pain he was under. I can only hope the nurse decides to give him something to help him sleep. His dad decided to stay the night with him again, and I am longing for sleep myself, although I wish I could have stayed as well. He will see the doctor again in the morning, and I'm hoping we can hear a more detailed prognosis than what we've received so far. For those of you who know Ryan well, yes he can even joke under these circumstances. His humor showed through a few times today, but the difficulty he's having could still be seen behind the humor.