Update 10/18

Hello All—

Kari has had two bad, sleepless nights in a row, and tonight is shaping up to be no different.  At this point, things are almost as bad as they were on 10/6, which was the worst night we’ve ever had.  Her spasms are incredibly strong again and have been going on since 4:00 pm (its now almost midnight), save the one hour she was asleep.  They didn’t start off that bad, but now her whole body shakes and trembles.  She also started to shake her head back and forth so violently that I put her collar back on to protect her neck.  When she’s having the spasms, not much she says makes any sense, and most of it is just a mix of syllables again, not real words.  She’s not totally out of it though, as I’m pretty sure she knows who I am because I’ve learned a lot more about how she is when she’s like this.  Still though, it’s very hard to get her to breathe or try to calm down before she just gives up for a minute or so.  Hopefully this episode won’t be all night.  I feel sorry for her when she’s like this—it’s not who she is.  The doctors came in today to see her and said they might go back up on her risperdal because while she’s more aware and alert now, she’s still having a lot of delusional thoughts.  We have our third full-team meeting on Thursday, so we’ll see what the plan of attack is then.  I know we’ve had our release date pushed back into December, but it definitely could go back farther depending on how long this goes on.  Hey, maybe we Southlanders will get a white Christmas after all—well, hope not.

Aaron.