Update #5 on Peter

Casey Bell and I met Peter's dad, Rick Bennett, at the airport this morning and took him to the hospital. We arrived at the same time as Jennifer Reynolds brought Claudia after she slept a little last night. We all went in together, but Rick and Claudia could not see Peter right away as the staff was changing shifts and then they were changing Peter's medicine.

I left the hospital about an hour ago. When I left, Rick and Claudia were both in at Peter's bedside. I'm so glad we live in a time where they could be here so quickly.

Speaking of time... those of us here with Peter are experiencing a very strange warping of time. The accident only happened about 50 hours ago, but we feel like it was at least several days ago. We routinely find ourselves trying to recall something or some event and we strain to remember it and then realize that it was only 8 or 12 hours ago. I don't share this to gain your sympathy, but just as a matter of information about what it is like to be a part of this.

Here's the latest that I know.
At 8:30AM Dr. Zeng stopped the sedative that was keeping Peter in a coma. He now has a chance to wake up. They don't do anything to help him wake up... they just stop the sedative and wait to see what happens. Obviously, this is very important. The best thing that could happen is that Peter will wake up, look around, and maybe want to talk. All of these things increase his coma score. The worst thing would probably be that he doesn't wake up. If he doesn't wake up, he'll get another CT scan and will try to figure out why he doesn't wake up. If he does wake up and is alert and maybe tries to speak... we enter a new phase of recovery where we can start to learn how badly damaged his brain is and how that damage affects Peter. Up to this point, all efforts have gone towards the first phase of head trauma treatment: to keep Peter alive, manage the trauma, and stabilize him enough to let him try to wake up.

As I mentioned above, when I left the hospital, Rick and Claudia were in with Peter. I have not heard any more about their time with Peter. It is possible that the sedative was wearing off while they were in there and maybe Peter started to wake up. Wouldn't that be awesome?! It is possible that Peter didn't move at all. I'm sorry that I don't know and I won't take time to find out now as any calls I make right now will interrupt visiting time, which is from 11:00AM to 11:30AM. Peter will entertain many guests during this 30 minute visiting time and perhaps he will be awake.

There is always more I could say... but I'll send this now so some of you who get a chance to read it can have time to pray during this visiting time as that could prove to be greatly stimulating to Peter and help him to wake up. I'm not even going to proofread so sorry if something is unclear.