{Karlton Bontrager}

Is it meningitis or is it not? The answer seems to vary according to the person we talk to. One person says the term is a general one used for any kind of infection in the cerebro-spinal fluid (CSF). Yet the lab has been unsuccessful at growing anything in the collected CSF samples. Maybe it’s [...]

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Yesterday was a good day. Thank God for good days! Karlton sat up in the chair for breakfast, and he ate a decent breatfast, though only half the quantity of breakfasts last week. He sat up in the chair again for lunch. And twice thereafter he asked to sit up on the bedside commode rather [...]

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Each time Karlton has made a move to a different ward or hospital, we’ve decorated his room with the cards he’s received, photos of family and friends, and the beautifully patterned panels of cloth that Alexa brought back from India for him. Psychologically, it just may be more effective for us than it is for [...]

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Yesterday upset the apple cart. Karlton has made such positive progress for so long, and I really had no right to expect the trend to continue. Yet I was unprepared for things to unravel so quickly. When I arrived at ISIS about 11:00a., one of the residents was examining Karlton. Overnight the side of his [...]

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Yesterday was a challenging day for Karlton. It started with his being sensitive to the light. We’ve had curtains on the window throughout his stay at ISIS, but yesterday he insisted on having the curtains closed nearly all the way. Then company arrived in the morning. This included a friend that Karlton hadn’t seen in [...]

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Without the stimulation of therapists getting him out of bed and making him do things, Karlton sought a little stimulation of his own. Just before lunchtime yesterday he asked to get up to sit in the chair. Later in the day I asked him if he wanted to listen to music, and he said yes. [...]

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The nurse weighed Karlton when he took him for a shower yesterday. He was 67.45kg. At 2.2 lbs./kg., that’s 148 pounds, down from his normal weight of 175. He’s lost about 30 pounds in the hospital. No wonder he eats everything in sight. We had the meeting with the doctor, a nurse, a PT, an [...]

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This was the day that Louis and I were to fly to California to spend 10 days with Jennifer, Alec, Alexa, and Brian. How quickly those plans changed. How quickly all of our lives changed. I did see Jenn, Alec, & Alexa briefly at LAX between my flights from Boston and to New Zealand. Louis [...]

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It’s interesting how bonds grow in the hospital. We’ve made some attachments to parents of other patients. One teenager was vacationing with his parents in Queenstown when he was struck by an automobile. He was able to leave intensive care before Karlton did, but then we met up with his parents again when Karlton moved [...]

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