chronic lympocytic leukemia

My uncle is currently hospitalized and on a ventillator. He walked into the emergency room on Monday with 1.0 WBC and 50 PLTS. By wednesday he was in ICU on a vent. He initially came to the ER complaining of neck pain and headache - he is 78yrs old. The physicians ruled out meningitis (w/o a spinal tap) based on other issues/symptoms - and he was too unstable to do a Bone Marrow at the time. Because his condition was deteriorating, he was transfered to another facility. He's been showing signs of progress, his kidneys began functioning again and they were talking about puting a trach in instead of the vent. He's been on the vent for almost 2 weeks now. The also were going to give him lasix (sp?) to help reduce the amount of fluid accumulating in his body and to help remove some fluid built up around his lungs. Right now, the critical care doctors are mainly concerned with his lungs - apprently they are septic..he has been on heavy antibiotics since day one however...This brings me to my question. As of this morning, they were discussing doing a "procedure" which would paralyze him - in order to keep him on the ventillator. Has anyone heard of this...? I am in the Medical Field on the Laboratory side, and am completely in the dark on this procedure....