Update: Senator Johnson Responsive

Less than 24 hours post-op, Senator Johnson is "appropriately responsive" to stimuli, both auditory and sensory. He has moved all extremities and communicated that he understands verbal communication by blinking his eyes. He reached out to his wife and squeezed her hand.

Now, getting ready to enter day two, he is leaving the phase where his greatest danger is a sudden, new bleed. Now the enemy is infection. Frequently - probably q6º - he will have a CBC (Complete Blood Count) collected. (An aside - as you know, on TV they always have someone yell "CBC Stat" - well we never do that. Never. I was a paramedic for 10 years and in the lab bloodbanking for traumas for ten more. I have never heard that order called out, and I'm the one who would have collected the specimen. As a paramedic, I collected a "rainbow" or a tube of each color and taped the tubes to the patient's body when I set the IV in the chopper so the blood was ready for processing by the lab as soon as we landed.)

Back on topic - now they are watching his White Count, and he is probably getting a prophylactic IV antibiotic. I will be monitoring the news reports on the senators condition and posting frequently.