PRAYERS NEEDED!!

Hi everyone,

I'm gonna try to make this short and to the point because it is very LATE and I'm still having a hard time sitting up for extended periods of time. However, I needed to reach out to all my amazing prayer warriors and ask you all to PLEASE pray hard for my parents.

First of all, my dad was working behind his shop yesterday when his feet got tangled up in some lumber and he fell. He fractured both his tibia and his fibula (the 2 bones in the lower part of the leg), down close to his ankle. I truly PRAISE the Lord that he had his cell phone with him and was able to call my brother for help! (Since finding out about the accident, I have thought over and over about what would have happened if he had NOT had that phone. I have pictured him lying out there all alone, injured and in severe pain, with no way to get in touch with anyone! )

After seeing an orthopedist today, it was decided that he will have surgery tomorrow morning, at 9:00 EST, to have some heavy duty 'hardware' placed to stabilize his leg/ankle and help it to heal quicker. He will not be able to be up on his leg (no weight bearing) for at least 4 weeks! That is going to be extremely tough for my dad because he is used to being active, especially working in his shop where he makes all kinds of beautiful things out of wood.

If you don't mind, please pray specifically for the surgeon and other healthcare personnel as they work on my dad's leg tomorrow. Also, pray that the surgery goes really well, the pain is completely relieved and that he has super-speedy healing. Please also keep my mom in your prayers, too. She has been having severe problems with her back, in addition to her other significant medical issues which I've shared with you before.

Needless to say, the next few weeks are going to be an extremely difficult time for my mom and dad. Your prayers for them, and our entire family, would be greatly appreciated! Thanks so much for always being here for me! You are the best!

{{HUGS}}


UPDATE: The surgery went well and he is back home, but as the anesthesia wears off, he is beginning to experience a great deal of pain. Please continue to pray for pain relief! Thank you SO much!!

ANOTHER DYSAUTONOMIA FLAIR AND SEPSISUpdate #4 - WE'RE HOME!!

Hello everyone. I'm going to try and make this short and sweet because it has been a very LONG and ARDUOUS day! We wanted you all to know that Teresa was FINALLY released to come home around 4:00 this afternoon. She is doing fairly well, all things considered. She is extremely weak and exhausted from the nasty bacterial bug she has, not to mention how difficult it is to get any real rest while in the hospital!

Teresa really hopes to be back posting soon and to be able to sharing more about this long ordeal with you. Until then, if you are one of her many prayer warriors, she would like to humbly ask that you specifically pray for her pain to be relieved. This is her third port placement but this has by far been the most painful one. It was placed in her left upper chest, near her 'collar bone' and it is really difficult for her to use that arm. She had a very significant injury to that area from an automobile accident back in 1999, so please pray that the surgery did not reaggravate that injury. Hopefully, it is just due to some of the manipulation they had to do of that area during surgery.

Other than that, things are looking good for now. As always, our whole family truly appreciates your countless phone calls, visits, cards, meals and so many other things you have been doing to help encourage us and to make our lives a little bit easier to bear right now. May the Lord bless you 10-fold for all you have done and are continuing to do.

Thanks so much for all your support,

D

P.S. As for the 'Pay It Forward Giveaway', the two winners will be chosen at random by our youngest daughter, Bek, on Saturday afternoon, January 30th. The two winners will be notified via email, plus Teresa will do a post letting those winners know. Good luck!

SICK AND TIRED of being SICK AND TIRED

(Warning: Some readers may find the photos in this post to be a bit, um, gross.  Just a heads up!)

As some of you may know, I have been really sick over the last couple of weeks.  Well, sicker than normal for me.  It all started last September when I had surgery to have a PORT-A-CATH placed in my left upper chest so that I could continue to receive IV fluids of Normal Saline on a regular basis.  Normal Saline has lots of salt and is supposed to help keep my vascular space more full. This in turn is supposed to keep my blood pressure a little higher and help keep me from passing out when I stand….at least that’s the theory.  We have been doing this for over a year, but in the beginning we had to use peripheral sites like my hands, wrists, forearms, upper arms, etc.  We even had to resort to using my lower extremities because we ran out of anything to use elsewhere.

 (Here’s an IV in my ankle. Click on picture to enlarge.)

I just didn’t have any useful veins left.  Plus, I wound up with a blood clot in my right leg which was thought to possibly be related to  one of the IV sites in my ankle  and/or a very long car ride to and from VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY MEDICAL CENTER where I receive some of my care.  So, as an absolute last resort,  I had my very first port put in on September 22nd of last year, which was my husband’s and my 18th wedding anniversary.  Wow, what an awesome anniversary present, huh?!?

 (Here’s an example of what my port looks like.   The circular part is called the portal and has a silicone bubble (the septum) for needle insertion.  The long, skinny tube is a catheter that runs from the portal and is inserted into a large vein.  Once inserted, the tip of the catheter sits just inside the superior vena cava, just upstream from the right atrium of the heart.)    

The surgery went fine.  It only took about 15 minutes in the operating room (OR) under CONSCIOUS SEDATION and then it was in.  After that, everything went fine with the port until April 20th when I suddenly became very, very sick.  Every time we would flush my port or begin to run any fluids through it, approximately 20-30 minutes later, I would have extremely violent chills and my temperature would spike very high.  At first, we did not realize the connection with the port so I had several of these horrible episodes and each one was worse than the one before it.  At one point my fever was 105.  After several days, it was determined that my port was infected and that I was SEPTIC.  Each time we used the port, small pieces of bacteria  were breaking off and going out into my system and then I would have that horrible reaction.  I don’t think I’ve ever been that sick in my life! 

I spent 5 days in the hospital on IV antibiotics and fluids.  They had to do their very best to use peripheral sites again because of the port being infected.  My veins are so poor and they just would not tolerate an IV for long, especially with all the strong antibiotics and the Phenergan I needed for nausea and vomiting.  They finally determined that I had E-coli growing in my port.  That was very unusual as ports that are infected usually grow much different bacteria.  The doctors explained that I apparently had  E-coli somewhere else in my body and that the bacteria got into my bloodstream and then started to colonize in my port.  So, on April 28th, they finally took the port out and let me come home that day.

Once I was home, I had a bad reaction to the surgical dressing.   I am allergic to most all tapes.  All the skin around my surgical site had become extremely raw and was really hurting.  We weren’t supposed to remove the dressing but we just had to. 

(Here’s what my surgical site looked like a couple of days after surgery.  YUCK!)

After some much needed recovery time, I went back in on May 22nd to have another port placed, this time on the right side of my chest.  Everything went fairly well until Tuesday, June 30th.   Then, we started all over again with chills and fever.  I will tell you more about that in my next post.

Thanks for stopping by!  I hope to see you again soon.  Please leave a comment if you have a minute, just so I know you’ve been here.  You may do so by clicking below this post where it says ‘HEARTFELT COMMENTS’.  You don’t have to sign up for an account or give any personal information.   Where it says ‘Choose an Identity’, you can choose ‘Anonymous’ and then leave your name at the bottom of your message OR you can choose ‘Name/URL’ and then just put your name and leave URL blank.  It’s REALLY easy!  If I can figure out how to blog, you can leave a comment, I promise!  Regardless, if you don’t leave a comment, I’m still glad you stopped by!

Have a wonderfully blessed day! 

(You may click on any of the photos on my blog to enlarge them.)