Hello! My name is Miranda and I'm posting this on behalf of my parents.

Starting on July 11th, my mom took my dad to the ER for a swollen, painful knee that he could barely put weight on. They diagnosed him with a really bad infection believed to be caused by a bug bite. He was sent home on antibiotics. Over the weekend, things didn’t improve much, and mom took him back to the ER on July 15th. He was in rough shape and was afforded the luxury of an ambulance ride to Sioux Falls and admitted at Sanford. From there, he was diagnosed with a septic knee infection, high potassium, and diabetic ketoacidosis. Diabetic ketoacidosis is a very serious medical condition that, if left untreated, will cause death. He was then placed into the ICU for a few days to balance out his sugars with an insulin drip, as well as IV antibiotics and medications to fix the elevated potassium. Once that was all stable, he was taken for a knee scope to clean out the infection, which fortunately did not affect his joint. He was then discharged home with IV antibiotics via a PICC line every day.

On July 31st, they saw infectious disease for follow-up on the infection in the knee, and they are not happy with how his knee is healing, so they sent him back to orthopedics. Orthopedics wants to keep the stitches in longer and continue antibiotics at this time but are looking at another knee surgery.

At this time, it is undetermined how long he will need to be off work, but he has already been off work 3 weeks and he is the sole provider. My sisters and I are helping with what we can but are unable to absorb all the extra expenses.

Thank you!