Just returned from our trip to Canberra to see Meg. She was better than I expected her to be, obviously still not conscious but she seems to be fine bodywise and is looking quite ok with great colour in her face. We met up with Gatesy & Kristie and went into the Neurological High Dependency ward where she has been moved to. They had her in a recliner chair, which involves getting her out of and back to bed every day - another form of stimulus and she seemed to be quite comfortable there. She also had had a shower this morning which the nurse said she seemed to enjoy.
Meg's eyes are opening and closing but not on command as yet and you do see some sorts of reactions, particularly when the nurses are doing things. There were a couple of procedures that Meg obviously didn't enjoy and you could see some tensing up. We all chatted away with Meg and I filled her in on all the gossip I had and told her all the people who had sent emails and rang. At some points in time her HR elevated and then decreased but you can't say whether it is in response to anything we did or just a normal bodily reaction.
Gatesy mentioned that the monitoring probe had been removed from Meg's brain as they no longer had concerns about pressure build up. Also, her score on the Glasgow Coma Scale (which measures consciousness levels) had gone from a 4 up to an 8. While this is still in the critical range for consciousness it is an improvement. The scale does go up to 15 so there's a way to go yet - 13 says that the patient is conscious but confused.
Gatesy is absolutely great with her, maintaining contact and always talking with her. He'd found her iPod so we stuck the earphones in and there were quite some fluctuations in HR. Didn't see any toe tapping though!
From here on in we can only wait to see what happens. Some of Meg's other close friends are visiting her, along with family. Gilly Wheeler flew in Monday night and brought along a lovely montage of photos and there were some photos of Meg's younger days being trotted out as well.
It was a long trip but really worthwhile and I'm glad that we did it.
