Evening, April 21

(e-mail from B. Parady)

Time for me to reveal what was going through my head, and what lead to the effort to transfer Sabina to Columbia. What happened was that I did enough research on Sabina's fevers and condition to know that the fevers meant a very poor prognosis. Why I focused on Columbia was that there some pharmacological means to deal with these lower brain issues (spiking fevers can originate in the hypothalamus). Columbia has the skills to deal with this.

What I am bringing to you is that Dr Otten sat down with us to go over what is going on and what the treatment plans are. When Sabina exhibited her days of responsiveness, that gave everyone, including the doctors at Columbia some hope. What is happening now is that they are titrating her Fentanyl and Demerol to find a spot in consciousness for her to operate. She needs to be relieved of the horrific pains that she is getting enough to mount nerve action. Further on they there employing bromocriptine to control some of the other aspects of the autonomic nervous systems, among other drugs. They are also giving her insulin to control nerve damage in rehab.

The hope is that in the next week they can bring Sabina to some level of consciousness again. Currently she is exhibiting almost not cortical activity, and only brainstem activity. The eye motions are unguided and the body motions are not coordinated. We are back where she was before she became reactive. The hope is that they can bring her out, the fear is that she will not emerge.

Bottom line, Dr Parra gave us the superficial case. Dr Otten is describing the case of hope, very very thin hope. Literally hope against hope. The hope that I wanted to buy by getting Sabina where she is now.

Today Sabina mostly rested and had uneasy moment. This evening she is at ease, and I cannot tell from Shelly if she is showing some signs of comfort, but she may be. They have a sign over the walkways to Milstein that says amazing things happen here. Well, we hope so, and even if they don't we will continue to hold out hope.

My prayers for Sabina to find her consciousness, for her doctors to mount the good fight, for her nurses to manage her through this, and for Shelly and Sabina's friends to stay with her though this. God bless all of you.