So, 24 hours of no IV pain killers and he’s outta here….

The Trauma team said their goal was to get Caron to rehab.  He was up some yesterday, moved around a little, got exhausted quickly and was in pain, but chose to not receive any IV meds. 

So today, transferred to rehab. 

This should be a celebration, and it is.  It also created a fair amount of,  “holy…” because it was only three days ago that he was in some of the worst pain of this experience so far.  But there is great continuity of care from Trauma, plastics, ortho, nurses and the onsite Rehab staff, and all the docs are only a short walk away. 

So, the plan is for Carson to transfer in the next 2-5 hours, then get his first solid bathing in 5 weeks. 

What this Means

This feels like moving out of phase one and into phase two.  Out of the acute phase of the first 35 days of a bunch of surgeries, learning to get pain stabilized and manageable and into phase two of starting to get the body firing again. 

They anticipate this phase of rehab being close to 3 weeks (longer than I expected), then the first knee surgery, then back into rehab for another couple weeks.  He’ll have at least a couple other knee surgeries, but we hope he is at that point eligible to be an outpatient. 

So that means we might be halfway done with hospital stays before other potential nerve or muscle related surgeries down the road.     

Current Condition

Last 48 hours Carson’s pain has been pretty good.  There were a couple moments of needing some harder pain killers, but for the most part he has been more alert, eating well, and putting a good dent into that movie list. 

He has no movement in his lower leg.  No toe wiggling, no ankle rotation.  He has a tiny bit of feeling on the inside of his foot. 

He most likely will not be weight bearing on the leg for quite some time, pending nerve regeneration, knee reconstruction, etc.  He needs to regain motor control at the knee at minimum before he can bear any weight and likely need to regain some function in the lower leg for that weight bearing to be useful.  That could be 12 months, maybe longer, maybe shorter!?  But, we are willing that nerve to grow while pushing on all conditions possible for strength, function and recovery. 

So, rehab, here he comes.