I've been MIA...

and here's why. Let me try and condense a week and a half into just a short explanation. And yes, those who know me are free to go ahead and laugh at the idea of me condensing anything, let alone a long story. Wait, instead of rewriting it, I will just c&p an email I sent this morning.


Dear family and friends who have been "out of the loop" and had their emails sitting in my in box for a week with no reply...sorry and here's the rest of the story.

Jeff has been very ill, but I'm so elated to say that as of last night about 6 PM he is home!!!

A timeline of what has happened:
-Last week on Wednesday (April 23), he was headed home from a business trip in Central Va, and called to tell me he was too sick to drive. I told him to try and make it to his mom's house in Richmond and rest for a while, then try to come on home. He did that and then did make it home but was pretty sick.
- Thursday, I took him to the doctor and he had strep throat, so we thought that was it. He got medicine and went to bed.
-Friday, he was worse, with tons of pain in his abdomen and all over his body, and even though it wasn't normal strep throat type pain, we assumed it was from being sick. Friday night was awful with abdominal pain, but I thought perhaps the antibiotics from the strep throat were upsetting his IBS.
-Saturday he was even worse, so I decided to take him the hospital ER. They determined that it was intestinal and told us to go to a GI specialist as soon as possible. Gave him medicine and sent him home. At this time he was having very bad chills, sweats, and fevers, but that was explained as being caused by the pain.
-Sunday, still very bad, even getting worse.
-Monday, Even worse pain, fever chills and sweats, also at this point could not pass urine without physically pushing on his belly to force it out. I called our family Doctor and they told me to take him straight to the ER. I did take him Monday afternoon and by late Monday night after various IV antibiotics, CT scan and chest xray, they admitted him with dehydration, infection, reduced kidney function, and fluid around his heart.
-Tuesday- We spent the day in the hospital with him on fluids and antibiotics, and seeing doctors. By late Tuesday afternoon, we still had no answers. We had seen infectious disease, internal medicine, and urology. They all agreed he was very sick but no one took his case. Throughout this time, even with all the IV antibiotics, he still continued with his cycle of sweats and chills and fever. Finally, one of the doctors called a colo-rectal surgeon who came in last thing of the day, right at 5 pm. He talked to us for a long time, reviewed the tests and CT scans, and finally decided that he would take Jeff and wanted to do surgery the next morning. He said he would have to go exploring and that he knew what he was looking for, just wasn't sure where he would find it. He was looking for a cyst or abscess in the colon. - Apparently this is because they didn't use the contrast dye stuff when they did the CT scan in the ER.
-Wednesday, surgery was a bit more complicated than expected given that he didn't know exactly what he was looking for, or where. They did find a source of all the infection, a cyst/abscess/not sure what to call it, (the Dr. used a big word), was wrapped around his intestine, almost completely encircling it. It had apparently burst at some point, and spread. By Wednesday day, his kidney function was back and all the fluid was going so the heart was no longer a concern. They said if his fever went down he could come home on Thursday. I was very hopeful because by Wednesday afternoon and evening his fever had broken.

-Thursday- A roller coaster day. The doctor said that since his fever came back during the night Wednesday night/early Thursday, he would probably not let him come home. Then the surgeon said that yes he could come home... then the other doctor said no he couldn't. I should explain. The "other doctor" is one who we don't know at all, he is simply the cooperating Dr. for our family Dr. at this hospital. I was not impressed with him and had to refuse some tests on Wednesday as well, so him saying that Jeff couldn't come home made me upset. The surgeon who actually WORKED on Jeff said that his white count was down and doing great, he looked great, the chills and fever were gone, yes he can come home.
So...I was about ready to ask the nurse manager how I could go about firing "other doctor" and having the surgeon be our physician of record and let him discharge Jeff, when apparently the surgeon called "other doctor" and told him to let Jeff come home.
I went and got him last evening.

Friday (today, May 2)- we are all home together, it is wonderful. The poor kids have been bounced all week. Between my very dear MOPS (Mothers Of PreSchoolers) group and my father-in-law, the kids have had excellent care all week, but they still really missed being home and of course mommy and daddy. We do still have some recovery to go through, due to the nature of this surgery, they do not close the incisions, they want them to drain, so I have to gaping holes (about the size of my thumb!) to keep clean and dry and dressed.

Jeff is still of course on very strong antibiotics, and pain medication. We do not know how long he will be out of work, at this point he has missed 7 days, and I doubt he will be back next week either. So still a lot to be praying for. I am utterly exhausted as I was not feeling great even while he was out of town last week and was looking forward to him coming home so I could get some rest. As I am sure you can tell, that rest never happened!

Again my MOPS group and other church friends are coming through, I just had a large portion of groceries delivered to my house for us to use for lunches, and we will have hot meals delivered to the house every night for the next few days too. Hopefully this will be enough time for me to get good and rested and able to handle everything again. I am now 23 weeks pregnant and the baby seems to be doing great. Lots of kicking and movement, feeling fine, just easily tired.

Even though we would never choose to have this happen, I would be remiss if I didn't share how blessed we have been with support through this. My father in law kept the kids for me on Saturday and then again Monday when I took Jeff to the ER. I actually had to leave him (Jeff) in the ER on Monday night because as you may have seen on the news, we had Tornadoes through the area on Monday evening, and they were hitting all around my in-laws house and my mother in law was home alone by herself. By ten PM, I assumed (but couldn't get confirmed because the ER doctor was busy with incoming ambulances carrying tornado victims) that they would admit him, so I went ahead home to let my father-in-law get home and check out any damage. Thank God they were fine; many, many people lost everything. The ER doctor called me about 10:45pm to tell me that yes, he was admitting him.

By this time it was too late to plan anything for childcare the next day, but I knew that we had a MOPS meeting scheduled. I simply showed up on Tuesday morning at the church, told the first lady I saw what was going on and everything was instantly taken care of. They took the car-seats and I headed for the hospital. If you are a mother you know what a blessing it is to have a circle of friends who love and care for your children as much as their very own. For the next three days, my MOPS friends took complete care of the kids, picking them up, dropping them off, feeding them, they even got Joy down for her nap, which is a major achievement. The kids were brought home to me each night once I got back home from being with Jeff. As I already shared, my "meals on wheels" will start today, and I even had offers to let me put my laundry in a bag on the porch and someone would pick it up and bring it back the next day clean. God is so very, very, good and we are so very, very blessed.

It was very scary for a few days, I have honestly never seen anyone that sick. The chills and sweats were like nothing I've ever seen (and remember I've worked in the medical field!). Then on Monday when the ER doctor said that his kidney function was low and that he had fluid around his heart... that was also scary to say the least. He looks so much better now, and even though he's sore from the surgery, he actually feels much better too.

I am so sorry that you all are hearing this after the fact, but I just wasn't home except for to sleep pretty much all week. My own mom had to wait until 10pm the night of his surgery (Wednesday) to get her update since I couldn't make long distance calls out of the hospital.

Love to all,
Jody.

So anyway, I'm busy here helping Jeff get around and doing wound care several times a day, taking care of the kids, and trying to get caught up on a week of nothing getting done.

Jeff is feeling well enough now that I can begin my merciless teasing and asking what is SO special about me being pregnant thay he has to compete with me? You see, he did this when I was pregnant with Joyana too! That time he got appendicitis and had surgery which was an ER trip and a hospital stay too, although not nearly this long or complicated! I am almost afraid to even think about having another baby... not for my sake but because who knows what kind of sickness he'll come up with next time!