As many of you know, last year Terry Paul Stringer was on the threshold of death. His story is almost unbelieveable except to those were there. He started out one year ago this month going into the hospital with a tendon tear in his hip. The surgery was relatively minor. He stayed in the hospital overnight and was released to come home.

Two weeks to the day later, he was back in the ER with a raging staph infection in the incision site. The surgeon went back in, opened up the incision, cleaned out the infection (we thought) and put in a wound vac. Terry was in the hospital for 9 days on pretty much every antibiotic they could think of to try to rid him of this infection. The doctor even commented that Terry had to have gotten the infection in the hospital.

After 9 days, the surgeon removed the wound vac and closed up the incision. Terry was released from the hospital with a picc line and IV antibiotics that would be administered at home under the supervision of home health care personnel. One side of the picc line became clogged and the home health care person forced it open which forced a blood clot into his lung.

The next day, he was back in the hospital with a blood clot AND the infection in his hip was back. That evening he couldn't breath and had to be intubated.  After 2 days, they removed the tube and he seemed to be better, but then the perfect storm developed. For the next 6 weeks, he remained in ICU as he developed double-pneumonia, threw multiple PEs (Pulmonary Embolisms - blood clots) and became septic. His life was literally hanging in the balance. He was intubated.  The tube was removed after a couple of days, but his breathing problems became worse. Eventually, the only thing the doctors could do was to re-intubate him and put him in a medically induced coma. For 8 days he clung to life. The doctors told me that he was as critically ill as a person could be.

When they finally attempted to remove the tube, he became quite aggitated and his blood pressure and heartrate soared. After 3 separate tries to remove the tubeand bring him out of the coma,  the decision was made to do a tracheostomy in order to get him off the ventilator. Finally, that worked and he began the slow process of healing. He was so weak he couldn't even hold a pen and once he was well enough to finally leave the ICU, he went into a long term care facility where he slowly began to recover from his long ordeal.

Terry began to heal both physically and emotionally after his ordeal; however, the infection in the surgery site in his hip continued to return time after time. He would go to the doctor, be put on oral antibiotics and it would go away for a while only to return again. Finally he was referred to an infectious disease surgeon who scheduled him for surgery in March 2016 to take care of the staph once and for all.

Before the surgery, Terry had to undergo normal pre-op tests to be cleared for surgery. A nuclear stress test revealed abnormalities in his heart and an angiogram showed that three of the arteries to his heart were clogged with the one that delivers blood to the front of his heart being 100% blocked. At the Heart Hospital, they put 2 stents into the arteries that were partially clogged to get him ready to be able to withstand his surgery.  He had the surgery and the doctor did a wonderful job and the infection in his hip was finally gone 9 months after it started. 

Terry was feeling much better and went to Iowa to visit family. A couple of days after he arrived, he began to feel ill. He was taken to the hospital in Marshalltown, IA where they discovered he had had a heart attack. An angiogram revealed that the 2 stents that had been put in in March were now blocked and he had 90, 95 and 100% blockage in 3 arteries. He was then transferred to Mercy Heart Hospital in Des Moines where he underwent a quadruple bypass. They went in expecting to do a triple, but ended up doing a quad. That surgery was on May 13. He is still in Iowa, but has been cleared to come back home to Texas this weekend.

The past year has been stressful emotionally, physically and financially. His insurance in 2015 did not cover most of his medical bills and in trying to pay off those bills, we found ourselves falling into debt. We are struggling to pay our normal expenses plus his medical expenses.

Setting up a Go Fund Me account has been suggested many times, but we kept thinking we could get through this. However,  this last episode has created additional expenses with travel, etc. that we simply cannot manage. I finally decided to swallow my pride and set this account up.

Simply put, "We need your help" to help us climb out of the financial hole that these medical expenses have dug for us. If you are able to help, thank you. If you are not, we understand.  Thank you and God bless you.

I have never before posted the picture taken in ICU last Summer below as it was too traumatic for all of us.