#11: Re: Man Down!! Author: DDM_Pyromancer,
You have posted in this forum: Wed Dec 18, 2013 11:04 am
Salvatoris wrote a novel on FB:
I want to thank everyone for their kind words, well-wishes, thoughts and prayers. I know it will mean a lot to Rusty when he sees it. I told him yesterday that I would sit and read them all to him when he is a little more awake. There are no words strong enough to express how relieved, excited and happy I felt when I was able to look at him eye to eye yesterday, and to finally know for sure he could hear what I was saying to him.
Only two years older than me, Rusty is first and best friend I ever had. For the last forty years we've been about as close as two brothers can be... And from time to time we fought like only two brothers can. Through think and thin, rain or shine, he has been a constant fixture in my life. As many of you know, we have lived and worked together for almost all of our adult lives. Since he went in to the hospital, I never considered any possibility other than him stubbornly fighting his way through this thing. I don't even know if I can imagine a world without him. I just know I wouldn't want to.
Now that Rusty is getting to the point of being an active participant in his own recovery, I would like to post a little more specific update than I usually do. I have avoided posting some of the scarier sounding stuff up to now, wanting to just stay positive and comforting on these public updates. Now I'd like to write a fairly frank assessment of his current medical situation and what, describe we can see so far of the road ahead. If you aren't interested in reading any scary sounding possibilities or current realities, and just want the summary, stop reading at the end of this paragraph. Without a coat of sugar on top, some of these things might be worrisome or hard to hear. I'm posting it here today because it can also be hard to say, and it doesn't get any easier the more times you say it. --- The short and slightly sweeter statement is that Rusty is awake and on the mend, but he still has a long way to go. He is gradually becoming more and more awake, and has fewer and fewer tubes, hoses and needles poked in him every time I see him. He is on a path out of the hospital to continue his healing and treatment from a bed at home, but the length of that path is still unclear. Its a marathon, not a sprint, but he is well on his way.
Now for the specifics... Let me start with the "awake" part. He is about half sedated still, so while he is conscious a lot of the time, he is not entirely lucid all of that time. He will look you in the eyes when you talk to him, and he clearly understands most of what is being said while he is paying attention. Though it looks like its taking some work, he can shake his head to answer questions. And if you are lucky enough to be his brother, you can have whole conversations just by looking at his face. Some of the time the sedatives are winning the fight and he seems to be more sleeping with his eyes open than actually awake. That is how he was when I first saw him conscious, and it was a little upsetting. When Misty leaned down to talk to him, he turned right to her, and seeing the recognition and greeting in his eyes was a giant relief to me. I got a little emotional over it, and when Rusty saw me upset, he tried to sit up and gave me the exact same look I have seen from him after I got just my ass kicked or my heart broken. It was the face he makes when seeing me very upset makes him even more upset than I am. The same face he makes when he is helping up off the ground, dusting me off and boosting me back up on the horse. The face I have seen my whole life when I am hopeless, lost or broken, when I am inconsolable or ready to give up. My big brother was trying to get up out of that hospital bed and fix me. That is when I knew for sure that he was still in there, just the way we left him.
Now for the current prognosis on his heart. Its somewhere between what they originally said was the best we could hope for and the worst possible case, assuming he even made it through the first night. His heart is pumping, but it is badly damaged and working at a greatly diminished capacity. The doctor said yesterday that it's about 20%, and he does not expect it to improve much beyond that. This is not something that will heal over time, or can be improved with treatment. The percentage they are giving us may go up a little bit, but they don't expect it to change very much.
Its too early to determine the exact kind of care Rusty will need once he is out of the hospital in order to maintain his health at whatever level of activity 20% functionality of his heart can provide. He will certainly need medication, most likely ventilation and possibly even a "permanent" IV. All that will have to be assessed and determined later. Now, I put permanent in quotes because having a heart that can only do a fourth of its normal work is not a permanent solution itself. He is going to need a heart transplant to get back an acceptable level of health. He will just have to take it easy and tough it out and let us take care of him in this condition for however long it takes him to get to the top of the donor list.
As scary as that prospect sounds, the odds for someone who is maintaining reasonable health outside of a hospital, with that level of heart functionality, are actually very good. It can be a long wait. Every year there about 3000 people in the US waiting on the transplant list, and there are about 2000 donor hearts available. It can take up to a year and half or longer for people in a less than critical situation to to get the heart they are need. It wont be fast or easy, but we can take care of him for 18 months, no problem. I'd carry him around every day on my back for that long if he needed me to. So maybe he has to stay in bed and watch tv or play video games a lot, take frequent naps... that's exactly how he would schedule a vacation.. or spend any given Saturday.
The point I hope everyone will focus on here is that Rusty is alive, awake and there is an emerging path from where he is now, to near full circulatory functional, something he hasn't had for a long time already. The path is long and winding, a little rocky and uphill most of the way... but its well worn and fairly brightly lit. He will have to walk it slowly, and he will need us to lean on when the ground gets rough or the hill gets steep. But i know he can make it to the end, even if we have to pick him up and carry him part of the way.
For today, lets all just be happy that he is awake, and relieved that he should be able to wait for his new heart at home, surround by family, rather than in the hospital, sustained by machines. For me, that's a victory, and every day he is still with us is a success.
This got way longer than i intended and Im sure its rife with spelling and grammatical errors... I have to stop writing this novel and go get some work done, I will clean the typos up in a bit.
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