February 3rd, 2011 by Conor

Where should I go after I leave Montana?
[polldaddy poll=4493588]

February 2nd, 2011 by dctrauma

(Dictated by Danny to Conor) before you read this I want to make sure people know that Danny wanted his admin name to be DCTrauma and he wanted his category for posting to be DCTrauma Spills All. Those were his ideas, I wish I could take credit for such creativeness. Only Danny could be so creative even at a time like this. Without further ado…

Hi everyone,

Due to my 4^th brain surgery in a month my head is pounding.

I have a tube in my stomach for eating. It won’t come out for another 2 weeks. It sucks. There is a hole in my neck from where the trache tube went in for breathing. I have roughly 45 staples between my stomach and head. There is a drain coming out of my head where the spinal fluid drips out into.

It hurts to read and look at the computer screen. Lights and the telephone both bother me. Even the beep of the the machines bothers me. I want to punch out the guy who runs the floor waxing machine. I’m tired of waking up in the middle of the night to a nurse waiting to draw blood at 3 AM with a smile on her face. The anti clotting leggings drive me nuts. I frigging hate them! I haven’t showered in a month.

Old ladies in the ICU were really excited to bathe me and it was creepy as hell. So I faked an asthma attack to get out of it. I didn’t want to be washed by 2 50 year old women.

Ill be sure to write more tomorrow. If anyone has any questions for me post them here and I will answer them. Thanks for checking in and thanks so much for all your support.

~Danny

February 2nd, 2011 by Conor

Another day down, another day closer to heading home. It looks like they are going to take the drain out and then wait until Danny’s pain becomes manageable before they get him out of here. That might anytime within the next 4-8 days. It really just depends on how his pain is.

The major issue right now is the headaches that Danny is experiencing. Luckily, I never get headaches, so I can’t really relate to the pain that Danny is feeling. I hate headaches, and I know before this experience Danny had never really had many major headaches either. He is lucky that it is the only problem that he is really having to deal with at this point, but I don’t really know if Danny fully gets that yet. He hasn’t really seemed to grasp how big and potentially detrimental this could have been.

It might be awhile until he fully grasps what happened. Every time someones name comes into the picture of the recovery process he wonders “how does so-and-so know this happened?” I have to explain that there is a whole website and that there are people around the world that we don’t even know that know this happened. Danny you didn’t break a bone in your hand. You didn’t snap your wrist. You were critically injured and had 3 life threatening surgeries on your brain. Numbers were discussed with regards to your chances of survival. This was and is H U G E. This will likely in some way or another change the rest of your life- shoot I know it already has for me.

Although if anything we are on the good side of what could have been really bad its still hard to believe that things are so good. I hope that there are no major complications down the line with all this because it almost doesn’t seem possible that things are going so smoothly. I know that Michelle and I have both had multiple surgeries on one of our knees. Both of still experience some major creekyness in our knees as if they could use some oil and some reworking. At the moment, I am glad that it is my knee that has the complications. I can’t imagine how a brain works that needs oil. To Michelle and I our limitations are physical and are exposed when we try to stand up quickly or go for a jog. To Danny, his limitations might not be evident until a long time from now when he tries to do something like math or when he straps on his snowboard. Almost ANYTHING could be effected from a brain injury since it serves as such a hub for the whole body. I continue to cross my fingers everyday that he will continue to heal back to 100%. Because neither of us have experienced 4 surgeries on one of our knees. Danny has done that to his brain.

It might be a few weeks or months until he is really able to grasp the whole situation. It has to be hard trying to make sense of the whole thing when all you can think about is that that you have horrible headaches and want to get out of this hospital. I know that YOU, me, and everyone else out there have had four and a half weeks to process and try to make sense of this event. Soon it will hit Danny exactly how huge this all was. If not, good for him for not letting him skip a beat. But I sure as heck hope he grasps what this incident did to the rest of us. This has been the slowest, hardest month of my life.

Until tomorrow.

Conor

February 2nd, 2011 by Conor

As always send em to 603-496-6621 or donations@dannyisthebomb.com

February 2nd, 2011 by Conor

Pictures sent in by Colin Tuttle.

February 2nd, 2011 by Conor

February 2nd, 2011 by MIchelle

Danny’s drain will be coming out tomorrow. The drain is a catheter, or a clear tubing, that is in Danny’s skull near the top of the head. At the end of the drain there is a plastic pouch that fills with the liquid from Danny’s head. They measure it and empty it regularly throughout the day. The doctor is happy with the progress post operation and said that as long as we can regulate Danny’s headaches with pills then he should be in the clear to leave the PCU soon. His head is in extreme pain so the doctor had one of those pain buttons added to Danny’s IV set up. On top of that he gets pain pills every six hours. Hopefully the pain will reduce as the CT scan already showed improvements and the decision to proceed with the last surgery also had something to do with the doctors presumptions that the liquid beneath the skull was adding to his headaches. I’ve hit my head a few times on counter tops or things around the hospital since this all happened and I find myself laughing as I wince in pain knowing that Danny is going through so much more.

-Michelle

February 2nd, 2011 by Conor

Michelle’s hat, we actually Ellen K’s hat of Glen New Hampshire, was just raffled off bedside. Danny has been a little groggy this evening but was more than happy to pull a name out of a hat. Sorry everyone that has a higher expectation of my video skills. This was shot with a hand held point and shoot camera and I mistakenly put my hand over the mic at one point. Just another whoops to add to the grand mix.

February 1st, 2011 by Conor

Everything finally caught up to me. This process is truly exhausting physically and mentally. I have been sleeping more and more lately. Last night, I got a monumental 17 hours of sleep- I guess you can only run on E for so long, and it all came crashing down over the last 36 hours. I don’t think I have ever slept that much in my whole life.

In the past month I have posted about Danny over and over again. Our whole family has been to hell and back in that time. We have been waiting and crossing our fingers for the time when Danny would wake up and we would be able to get excited about having him back in our lives. I have suggested to people to make sure to bring Danny up and that now is when he will need us the most. All of that is well and good. But I forgot one thing. And it’s something I should not have forgotten. It’s funny because there must have been 100 people, hell maybe even 200 that said “make sure you get some sleep” or “take care of yourself.”

And I have – for the most part. But as all of you that suggested that type of thing probably knew. It’s hard to do. The only place I have wanted to be for the last month is wherever Danny is. I didn’t want to be getting sleep at the hotel room. It wasn’t where my heart was. Well, now that things are looking up I am catching up on some much needed R & R time I have begun to understand what you all were warning me about. The crash. You become useless and frustrated when you are that exhausted.

It’s funny because for people that know me well at this point in my life they know that one of the only things I don’t do a lot of is sleep. I enjoy being alive far too much to waste it on sleeping. I guess I just don’t see the point really. I know that sleeping is a recharge but I also feel like it is an escape from reality. Most of the time I am far too excited by being alive and can’t even imagine what I would miss if I were to sleep.

My biggest problem is that often times I don’t listen to my body enough. I don’t force myself to sleep and relax and think about what has happened. It’s the part about thinking about what has happened that is finally catching up to me.

The part that is getting difficult for me is that I have just begun to realize how much this is going to change Danny’s life AND mine. Danny and I do all kinds of stuff together and that includes work and play. This instance is going to greatly effect my life in a lot more ways than the last month that I have lost at his bedside. It has been hard to think about work or the future at a time like this, but it finally feels fair to consider these ideas and how they play into MY life. It seems hard to imagine them without Danny as a key role in either of them. Danny has been the star of all snowboarding edits and was going to be of the snowboarding movie we were making this year. I find it hard to push through and imagine doing the project without him. Sure, I could do it anyway and say that I am going to do it in his honor, but it doesn’t feel right. Danny and I started Shreddy Times together and it has always been about the adventures that we have had together on and off the slopes.

So earlier today, when I began to think about what’s next, I had a mixture of excitement and terror when I imagined that once again I have the whole world as an option. I can go anywhere and do anything. It’s crazy because this is the first time anything even close to this has ever happened to me. I need to come up with some career like decisions as a result of what happened to Danny. I’m not about to leave him high and dry by any means, but I have to find things that will work for me while he is going through the recovery process. When there is a point that we can resume working on things together or plan some sort of trip, I’m there, but in the meantime I have to think about what is going to work for me. It’s a strange feeling after all the time we have spent progressing things together. And I definitely look forward to the point that things can start proceeding forward once again.

It’s not like I hadn’t thought oh wow this is really going to change the winter, or damn I wonder what Ill be doing a year from now. But I hadn’t really thought much about how they were actually going to change. I am beginning to have these thoughts and am trying to make plans and act on them. I know that above all else I need to continue to be there for Danny but I especially need to detox from what I have just been through. So, I am going to spend the next day or two coming up with some possible ideas. I might even throw a poll up and see what people think. In the meantime I am off to bed imagining how fun it would be to get my dive master in the Caribbean. That sounds like a nice break from all this. Hope your head drains well tonight Danny. I think we are on the 10 day countdown. I sure hope that’s the case.

Love you all!
Conor

February 1st, 2011 by MIchelle

In two days we will have been here for a month. Looking back on everything that happened in that month gives me the chills when I look over at Danny and watch him crack a smile or make a joke. It’s all become a blur. I’m glad that we have documented everything as I’m going to need to read what Conor and I wrote again when this is all said and done. Did this really just happen? How did we get so lucky, if luck is what it was? I still catch myself tearing up, but now it’s because of happiness more than tears of pain and sadness.

It’s been a wild journey and it’s only just begun. I’d like to think that the hard part for us is in the past and that we get to look forward to improvements in the future. I’ve come to know Danny’s family all too well now and can’t wait to continue the relationships after we leave Great Falls. I can’t wait to learn pottery from David and laugh hysterically with Ellen when we don’t have to worry about surgeries, pain meds, insurance, and rehab. I met Danny’s aunt, Ellen’s sister Julie, who has experienced the finest of Great Falls just down the street from the hospital at the Hi-Ho Tavern. Ellen says Hi-Hos is just not the same without you Julie. It was a pleasure to meet you and Turny Burny the Ugly doll has a special place in Danny’s bed. Thanks for coming!

Conor is like a brother now. I thought he was like a brother before this happened, but now I feel like I’ve known him my whole life. Sharing a hotel room with two beds and spending nearly 24 hours a day with Conor brought our relationship to a whole new level. Maybe I’ll even start to fight over the first BIG Cheez-It with him…on second thought, I’ll leave that for Danny.

It seems like things are starting to slow down over here in Great Falls. Less tubes connected, no more babysitters, and fewer updates make the light seem closer at the end of the tunnel. Leaving Great Falls will be strange. Going home to Tahoe won’t be the same without Danny there. Planning a trip to New Hampshire will be another adventure in itself. I’ve never been there, but I can’t wait to eat at Glen Junction and maybe even make some turns at Cranmore. I am also looking forward to meeting more of Danny’s friends from home. Until then I will still take this one day at a time.

-Michelle