Update #7 on Peter

Thanks for your continued support and prayer. The family wants me to pass on their sincere thanks to all of you in this outpouring of concern and love for Peter.

I'm not going to make you wait. Peter is improving. This is fantastic news. I do need to stress that Peter's situation is still very critical. We are, however, cautiously optimistic that his life no longer hangs in the balance of each passing minute.

At tonight's visiting time, Peter was moving a bit, but not responding to visitors. At one point, the nurse asked the visitors to tell Peter to try to do various things. He was told to open his eyes, but he could not do this. He was told to grasp another person's hand with his right hand and he did. He did not do it a second time when asked. The nurse put her hand in Peter's right hand and he was told to squeeze and he squeezed hard and the nurse said "good!" She then moved to the left hand and he squeezed her hand with his left hand too. This is great to know that he can respond bilaterally and independently with each hand. The nurse asked Peter to try to nod his head or shake it (indicate yes or no) to several questions related to his pain and how he was feeling. This was very difficult for Peter, but he was able to try to respond and in some cases we feel like we understood his answer. He was told to cooperate with the nurses' requests. For example, he is still moving his legs too much. When they tell him to stop moving his legs, he needs to stop. He did stop moving his legs on command 2 times during this visit. We told Peter about some of the tubes around his face and explained that one tube was to help extract phlegm from his lungs but that he would get rid of that tube faster if he could cough on his own to bring it up.

I can't say for certain what he understood and didn't understand, but he is very much trying to respond to stimulus. This is absolutely great news.

Peter received too many visitors tonight. His vitals started rising and he needed to rest. More on this in a moment (below).

Dr. Peter told me that Dr. Zeng raised the score on the coma scale from 9 to 12 because Peter was verbal today. Personally, I felt more like it was 11 instead of 12, but I'm an accountant working as a missionary and Dr. Zeng is a neurosurgeon so I'll revise my score up to 12, too. Even small improvements can change this score dramatically.

Peter is breathing on his own. He could have done this before, but the machine was helping his body relax and focus on restoration of health.

Dr. Peter told me tonight that if Peter had significant brain damage, we would have remained in a coma even after stopping the sedative this morning. He did wake up and worked hard to show us what he can and can't do today. At this time it is impossible to know to what degree Peter will recover but Dr. Peter's observation is good news.

Although Peter's mom said she might sleep at the hospital, this is the first night no one from the mission team is there. Although now that I typed that I realized that it has only been 2 nights. Remember I mentioned the time warping in an earlier post? The important thing though, is that Peter's condition is stable enough that we probably won't have to make major decisions at night and can get rest at home.

I bit of logistics now...
I mentioned earlier that Peter had too many visitors today. I've been asked to share the following:

• Now that Peter is out of a coma and is responding to visitors, too many visitors makes him much too tired. He is trying to communicate with people. But it is not in his best interest to do so with each visitor. In fact, tonight, Claudia and Rick graciously let others go visit Peter first and were saving their visit for last, but they didn't get to go in because Peter's blood pressure went up too much as a result of the stream of visitors. Obviously, this is a problem.
• From this point forward, Peter's parents will go in first at visiting time. We hope they will take the entire 30 minute visiting time. If they come out before the 30 minutes is up, it is possible that others may have the opportunity to enter and see Peter. Other than family, those who visit Peter are asked to not touch him and to speak quietly unless instructed by a nurse to do otherwise.
  
• Although it is now possible for just a few visitors to go in and see Peter, everyone is welcome to come to the hospital and join the constant fellowship, prayer, and sharing outside the ICU where we are always hanging out.
• Dr. Peter's orders here. Please do not come if you are sick or are recently recovering from illness. Peter and all the ICU patients are at extremely high risk of infection. Even if you are feeling better, it just means that your body has successfully fought infection, you could still be carrying that infection with you. We should have been watching this more closely.

Peter is at Cardinal Tien Hospital Yonghe Branch 耕莘醫院永和分院
The address is: 台北縣永和市中興街80號
The hospital has 2 buildings. Peter is in the one off of the main road. In Chinese it is called 住院大樓. Peter is on the 8th floor - ICU.
The hospital website is http://www.cthyh.org.tw and there is some English available, but I have to warn you that the web designer likes the blink tag. If you don't know what the blink tag is... click that link and you'll learn quickly.