Update 10/6

Hello All—

Well, this is the worst night yet.  After having a good morning, Kari ate lunch with us and I took my dad back to the airport.  When I got back to the hospital around 2:30 Kari was sleeping.  She had done so well with her PT in bed this morning and was totally normal mentally so we were planning on getting her up in her chair for a while.  She had much less pain and spasms too.  Around 3:00 Kari needed to be turned, so I woke her up (we try to wake her up first so we don’t startle her) to see if she wanted to stay in bed or get up and drive around like we were planning.  She was totally incoherent—even more so than before.  Usually she at least can somewhat listen to what people are saying and eventually can follow a few instructions, but this time she didn’t even know who she was.  She screamed and thrashed around in her bed for about an hour, spasming so violently that she kept hitting herself in the face.  Finally, she went to sleep and slept soundly until 7:15.  When she woke up she wasn’t any better.  For the last four hours, she has been screaming complete nonsense, repeating the last words she heard over and over again, constantly yelling obscenities (which if you know Kari, you know it’s the first time I’ve heard her talk like that) and trying to bite her hand when it flies up to her mouth.  It is so frustrating and it gets scary when she wants to shake her head violently back and forth.  We know that if she would try to relax and do the kind of breathing that my dad had worked with her that the spasms would decrease, but she is not able to make sense of anything that we say.  She just holds her breath for a few seconds and then lets out a loud scream and thrashes around.  This is the worst and most “gone” she’s been-even worse that the first night this all started.  Her whole body just trembles, and even when she doses off for a minute or two, her face is all contorted like she’s crying out in pain.  

I feel like I should add a closing paragraph here where I try to make sense of this all, but to tell you the truth, I don’t think there’s really anything else to write.  I just can’t tell you how much I hate this.  At this point, I don’t really even care if Kari ever walks or uses her hands again; I just want my wife back and for her not to be in pain.  It makes me so angry and frustrated that Kari won’t listen to me or her mother (who’s here with me now), and I can’t figure out why she would want to hurt herself.  It’s like I’m watching her stab herself with a knife and she refuses to stop.  We’re trying just letting her go right now because nothing that we say or do has any effect on her.  She refuses to even drink any water and just bites on the straw.  Pray for me too.  I’d choose just about anything else in the world than to watch Kari go through this.

Aaron.