Sepsis & alcohol withdrawal. Father won’t respond as doctors would like coming off sedation

[rhwoc]

I can’t find anything online that’s similar to my dads situation, so I am hoping I can gain some insight here.

My dad collapsed last Thursday morning 9/10. He was rushed to the hospital to have emergency surgery. They found a hole in his intestine so he went totally septic. Not only is he septic right now, but my dad is also a lifetime alcohol so he’s also battling alcohol withdrawal. He is on a ventilator and has been mostly sedated. He did has a seizure Saturday night. It wasn’t a full lockdown and lasted about two minutes. They said that was likely due to the AWD. They did a CT scan to make sure his brain looked ok and everything came back normal.

As I said, he’s been on and off the sedation. The past two days the doctors were very concerned that he wasn’t as responsive as they’d like him to be while off sedation. He would open his eyes and move all four extremities, but he isn’t following any commands.

The Doctor called me last night and expressed how concerned she was about that and that they needed to transfer him to a larger hospital where he could have an MRI and EEG done to make sure he didn’t have a stroke or anymore seizures. So last night he was helicoptered to the new hospital.

We are just waiting now for them to move forth with all the testing. He is otherwise in stable condition and his organs look good as of a day or two ago. But he won’t wake up. Why won’t he wake up?

He has three daughters and we are all out of state but will be flying in to be with him tomorrow. We can go in one person a day for three hours.

I just need my dad to be ok and the unknown is such a sickening feeling. Why won’t he wake up? Could it be all the heavy drugs they’ve had him on? I’m just beside myself. I can’t even function.

Just looking for an ear and maybe someone who has been in a similar situation. He’s fighting to major battles right now with the sepsis & AWD.

Thanks for listening. Hope I’ve made sense.

[Sepsur]

Hi @rhwoc

Welcome to the forum. I’m not sure of the interplay between sepsis & AWD and whether this would affect how quickly someone would wake from induced coma.

What I do know is that everyone wakes in their own time, there is no ‘real’ normal. One of the considerations is tolerance - I would suggest that, possibly, your father( because of his history) has a higher tolerance and so therefore the anaesthetist may have needed to use more sedative to paralyse your Dad to synch him with life support, hence him taking longer to wake up. I took 11 days to wake up after 57 day coma.

[Faithful2020]

Hi. My mom is going through a different medical problem but the concern came to be the same. After being heavily sedated for 3 weeks the doctors wanted her to wake up And be alert, open eyes and respond to commands. She is still not completely off sedatives, only on 1 though. Since the change in medication, she took 4 days to open her eyes. Just last night she coughed and gaged. For the last days I had been hearing that it wasn’t normal, that she was supposed to be alert and following commands. Doctor kept saying brain damage etc..

I was honestly getting worried and yesterday she did all that. I think bottom line is that every patient wakes up differently from sedatives. There is no “normal”. I’ve also read it takes some people days or even weeks to be fully alert. Cheer up and pray. May God be with all of you, especially your dad.

[Tsuology]

My heart goes out to you rhwoc and what you say makes perfect sense. My husband is in a similar position right now. He collapsed on Sept 5th with ?sepsis and ?liver failure. He is a lifetime functioning alcoholic too. He didn't need surgery but after a week of confusion and drowsiness on AWD, he went into respiratory failure and was moved to intensive care where he is still ventilated.

I have had the 2am phone calls to come in urgently followed by the 'stable condition'. He's now off all sedation and won't wake up. he opens his eyes but no other movement. His eyes are blank and it feels like there is nothing there, no one there.

They keep saying that we need to give it time, wait and see, some people take longer sometimes but the bottom line is they don't know---don't get me wrong they are doing tests and giving him the very best of care but the waiting is dreadful

Sending you lots of love

[swiss1978]

Hi, how is it now reading this post. Coming up two years since I had this personally - coma for 10 days 14 days ICU. Multiple organ failure and sepsis due to acute alcoholic hepatitis. Took a good year 18 months to get fully back on my feet but out cycling and working again. Brain fog took a log time to cognitively come back. I wish your Dad the very best, Alex