ohh no...

Ford has suffered a massive brain hemorrhage. He was taken to the OR around 3:30am so neurosurgery could remove a piece of his skull to suck out the blood. The surgeon described it as the worst bleed he's ever seen. At the moment no one has any idea how or why this happened. All day yesterday Ford was really sick, but all the symptoms pointed to infection and the doctors weren't much concerned beyond making sure he was on broad spectrum antibiotics. This is a huge surprise and a huge problem. As usual, they are are reluctant to speculate on how much function Ford has lost, but the surgeon suggested there would be significant damage to the right side of Ford's brain. When we pointed out to him that Ford had also suffered a massive stroke to the left side of his brain he seemed more than a little dissappointed and said: ...We'll see.

Ford survived the operation and is stable in the CCCU, which is one hurdle crossed - they really didn't have much hope that he would last the night. He's just gone down for a CT scan so they can track the bleed and see if it's gotten any worse since they drained it. If it has the surgeon has told us that they will not operate again an that will be that for Ford.

But even if it hasn't gotten any worse there is still a significant chance that Ford has reached the end of his line. We might not know for weeks how much of his brain has been damaged or how functional he will be. Since he's ventilated he can be kept "alive" pretty well indefinitely, given his other organs hold their own, but it's unclear if he still has the capacity to breathe on his own anymore.

More wait and see, but the picture's looking pretty fucking dim right now.