How it happened and where we are now

Disclaimer: I wasn't there, but this is what all the guys have told me: Liam was playing at his Sunday morning men's leauge game (2/22/09) and went up for a header. He and the guy from the other team both missed the ball, but cracked skulls. Liam was unconscious before he hit the ground (when he hit his head again, and broke a tooth). He stayed unconscious and the medics were called. They had to intubate him on the field and his breathing wasn't normal and then brought him to the emergency room.

His CT scan showed that his brain was swelling so they put a a tiny sensor through his skull to measure the pressure continuously where the impact was. It looks scary - put the piece in his skull is only the thickness of a pin. He also has a small amount of bleeding in his brain stem, probably from the force of his head jerking back and forth during the impact. He has diffuse axonal injury - basically his brain rubbed against his rought skull and against it self - it's scraped up like when you scrape you knee. After he was stable they moved him to the Neuro ICU. He has been there ever since. He is on a ventilator and he is heavily sedated, which go hand-in-hand. He needs to be sedated to keep his brain calm and not aggravate the swelling. If he's sedated he needs the ventilator to keep his breathing normal because when he is sedated it affects his breathing. They did a a dopler something or another ultrasound of his head the first morning and the swelling had actually gone done a tiny bit, which is awesome. It doesnt' mean it can't still get worse, but it's a good sign. They do a CT scan every night about 4am. Tonight they will remove the sensor because his pressure has been very stable! That's a really good thing. They will also do the first MRI. They wait till a couple days in so that they damage has spread to it's fullest extent so they can get a real picture of what's going on. The doctors said the MRI results won't change how they are treating him, but it will let us see what kind of tissue damage has occured, how extensive it is and what kind of bleeding there is. So, the summary is, he is stable. We will hopefully know more tomorrow. Hopefully he will keep improving and they will be able to wean him off the sedation and ventilator in the next couple of days. Granted, we don't know what's to come, but everything is encouraging right now.

Thanks so much to everyone for everything. I don't know where to start, but you all know who you are and what you have done. The support is amazing and thanks for taking care of everything so I don't have to. Sorry to everyone that I haven't been able to call back and that I haven't talked to personally. I know you understand:) We will all post things on here to that you can all just check this so I don't worry that someone hasn't heard the updates. I'll try to post after morning rounds, and who ever else is here will post also.

Erika