The Accident.

Hi everyone. Although most of you already know what has happened, I wanted to take the time to detail what has been going on since Thursday because we have been very stretched and making a lot of phone calls but not able to give all the information we would like. If we have not yet called you, please forgive us. I have not been able to do much more than call my mother to communicate with her, and John has been taking all incoming calls and making the phone calls that I can think to ask him to. My sister Ashley, John and I all appreciate your prayers and the phone calls and messages from you all. Please keep my father, from whom I have been estranged for the past 3 and a half years, in your prayers.

On Thursday night, at around 7 p.m. my father -- Hollis Loan -- had a serious accident in his home in Lexington, KY. For whatever reason, he fell down 22 hardwood steps from the first floor of his house into the basement and sustained a major head injury including 4 closed skull fractures. He was not injured in any other way...no injuries from the neck down. His wife and stepdaughter were in the house and only heard the fall and then found him unconscious at the bottom of the stairs. He was immediately rushed to the emergency room by ambulance. After spending most of the night in the emergency room, and I think he got a CT scan at some point during the night, he was transferred to the Neurological Intensive Care Unit at the University of Kentucky in Lexington.

When he first came to the emergency room, he was responsive although he was still unconscious. He responded to pain stimuli and even pulled the respirator tube out (he was not able to ventilate on his own after arriving on the hospital). Because of his injuries, however, his brain began to swell and blood began to build up in his brain and his responsiveness diminished almost completely in a manner of hours. One of the nurses in the unit tells me that this is usual for such a massive and serious head injury. It was then determined that he'd had a massive stroke originating in the left hemisphere of his brain -- the dominant hemisphere -- at some point. This is very bad because this part of the brain, especially the left frontal lobe, controls the ability to interpret and reason, and the left hemisphere is in control of major and minor motor functions...even something as simple as opening his eyes. We do not know if the stroke is what caused his fall or if it was a result of the fall. We will probably never know.

It has been a rocky couple of days, and the pressure in his brain (which has needed to be at 20 or below, referring to Intra-Cranial Pressure or ICP) has been consistently above 25, even going so high as 41-59. They have tried several things to reduce the pressure including a ventriculostomy and drug called Manitol which has helped reduce swelling. When these did not produce the results that were hoped, doctors elected to have my father put into a drug-induced coma using a barbituate called Penta-barbatol. It is very toxic to the major organs and can only be used for 5-7 days, but it reduces metabolic brain function and it was hoped that this would alleviate some of the ICP. Unfortunately, this didn't work either. I truly believe that the staff at the hospital has done everything in their power to help my father and to help us maintain some hope that he might recover.

What the neurologists have confirmed in the last 12 hours is that my father's brain function has been totally destroyed. If he had wished to stay alive, he could only do so on a tracheal respirator and feeding tube, and he would not be conscious. He and his wife had gone over extreme details of their last wishes and both signed living wills in December of 2005 (they were married in November of 2005). I have seen the living will and his signature is on it to indicate that he would not wish to have his life extended if his living condition would be such as it is, and desires that any artificial life support be disconnected and that he would be allowed to die naturally. The law in the state of Kentucky states that all barbitutates must pass out of a patient's system before artificial life support can be terminated. Right now his level is at 50% and it will be checked again at 2 a.m. tomorrow morning. When the drug has cleared his system, we will all say goodbye to him and he will be removed from the artificial life support. He will be administered a morphine drip for pain control and we will be able to be with him, but he should not live long because his critical condition does not allow him to breathe on his own. We expect that he will pass away sometime tomorrow.

My sister and I have been able to spend some time with our father and we have been able to tell him that we love him and that we forgive him. We have told him that we are sorry for not seeing him over the past few years and that we aren't angry with him anymore. I believe in my heart that he can hear us although he cannot respond. It is hard to see my father -- who is a very athletic, handsome 53-year-old man and has always been known for his personality and charm -- still very much intact and looking like himself and to know that he is not long for this world. Yet I feel blessed that I have had these last moments with him, and in some ways I know that he has clung to life so that we could be together again one last time. I pray that I will meet him again in heaven. His best friend Linwood has told my sister and I that my father told him many times that he knew what he'd done was wrong and that he was sorry for it. I believe that my father has repented and made his peace with the Lord.

Please pray for my Grandmother, Betty, who is devastated. She is 79, and at 25 buried her first husband after his accidental death, my father's oldest sister in the 70's, and in 1989 buried my Grandfather. She is very frail and distraught over losing her youngest child.

This is all I can write for now. I will try and update more in the next few days. We do not know when we will be back home. I want to try and see my mother when we leave Kentucky with my sister before I head back home to Edinburg and my sister returns to Denver. It is very hard to face living so far apart right now.