4o% Chance

I have been trying to get a hold of mom and dad all morning, but have been unsuccessful. Mandy just happened to be trying to call dad just as he was getting out of the meeting with the doctors and so got all of the information from dad. Here it goes: When david first arrived he was given a 5 on the glasgow coma scale which is a scale from 3-15 with 3 being the worst. to read more about the scale go to this link; it seemed pretty concise: http://www.medstudents.com.br/neuro/neuro4.htm So David was in bad shape. He has since improved, but we don't know what that number is right now. He was given a 40% chance of total recovery due to his age. The part of his brain that he hit is in charge of character, emotion and executive decisions so when he does wake up those will be the types of issues that he has to deal with on his road to recovery. when he hit, his brain "twisted" and thus broke some connections that need to heal. his brain is bruised also and that is why he is being kept under so that he can give his brain time to heal. also because when they were waking him up he was thrashing around and they don't want him to be doing that and cause more injury to his brain. they are going to give him more time in the chemically induced coma so that he can hopefully wake up calmly. his right lung has pneumonia. this is common to see in head injury cases because his immune system is down and it is possible that he will have recurrent infections. the unit that he is in is a specialized unit and one of the best in the country at handling these types of cases so david was very lucky that he happened to fall on the island of victoria. with his pneumonia his oxygen saturation levels are good. they said after he wakes up and starts on the road to recovery he will have the most improvement during 2 years, but then he probably will not have much at all. in the hospital, the nurses gave verbal commands like put your thumbs up and david was able to do that and wiggle his toes. so that means that we are not looking at paralysis too. thank goodness! mom will more than likely be going up on saturday, so if anyone is available to help out with the younger kids, let mom know. i am not sure what she has planned already, but any help i am sure would be appreciated. as i was writing this email sister crockett called and told me that she went to the temple and put david's name on the temple prayer rolls. i am grateful that she was able to do that. if anyone else gets that chance, i think that david could use all the help that we can give him through prayer and through our father in heaven. anyway, that is all that i know for now. i know many are anxious to read this so here it comes your way... katie