An "awakening" of sorts

We've had an "awakenings" of sorts in the past 18 hours, likely due to the addition of Ritalin and further reduction in his steroid intake.  Much more awake (only sleeping 19+ hrs instead of 24hrs/day).  However, he's still pretty confused -- it's like he's had a stroke the way he's trying to find the words to speak or questions he wants to ask.  Better, however, than 24hrs ago.  We'll take it.  Yesterday afternoon we didn't know what to think, so to have a turnaround this quickly was not expected. 

We need to get through this week (where we'll likely see the peak in improvement with the new medication per his internal medicine doctor this AM), and get him to start drinking fluids all the time.  Apparently damage to the hypothalamus and that part of the brain can impact his body's signal to drink more.  Dehydration is settling in, so some aggressive family prodding to drink is now in play at the Dillon house to get his blood pressure back up and heart rate down.  He has physical therapy coming out to start on his return to strength program. 

Also got him a quick haircut at the local walk-in salon on the way home from the doctor's office (I'm so thankful that I didn't have to follow up on my threat of using the clippers here at home; that could have been disastrous), so he's looking better today.  He's also not fighting us so much on eating.  He even picked up the Sunday paper as I was cleaning up the lunch dishes just now. . .not that he really read anything, but the desire to do something other than hold his head and go back to bed is an incredibly welcome sign.  Of course he's on his way for a nap now, but a positive past couple of hours.

Still waiting on feedback from Mayo's via the docs in Omaha, but I think if he's doing better on the Ritalin we're going to wait to head up to Minnesota for a few weeks. That trip would be really hard on him right now if we don't absolutely need to go.  I'm going to try and talk to our neurologist up there yet this week, however.  It's starting to look more and more like radiation damage causing all of this, and so we have some questions on how to determine if it's temporary or permanent.