Coma

[wknmom67]

My daughter's boyfriend has been in a coma for 2 weeks today as a result from a car accident. He has swelling on his brain and a brain bruise in one of the front lobes. At one time, his brain was bleeding and the blood is still there, but not currently bleeding. He has multiple other injuries to other parts of his body as well. He is still on the ventilator, although he is now doing most of the breathing himself. They recently gave him a trach and moved his feeding tube from his mouth to his stomach. They are reducing his sedatives and increasing his pain meds. We are very confused. No one has even mentioned brain activity, but he does seem to respond periodically. He has squeezed hands on command several times, he lets go when told, too. He has wiggled his toes and even opened his eyes when the nurse told him to. However, he doesn't do it all the time. In fact, since they decreased the sedatives and increased the pain meds, he has become less responsive. He moves a lot on his own, mostly his legs and hands and he arches his back, probably from pain or discomfort. He tries to remove his catheter and scrunches his face in disappointment when the nurses put obstacles in his way so he can't get to it. He has also removed his chest tube and we believe he tried to remove the ventilator when it was in his throat.

Does this sound like someone who will recover? Does it sound like someone with permanent brain damage? Why does he respond so much some days and not others? The nurses give different opinions every day. One says he'll pull through, another says he won't. They have even put a back brace on him today. Does this mean that they think he will be moving around more in the near future and they finally need to do something to address his broken back? Can anyone give us some insight? At first they even told us that his brain injury wasn't that bad. We just want some kind of answers.
Thank you.