Bubba’s Road to Recovery

I’m not one to ask people for help, however on April 9 our family’s lives changed. Bubba went to Urgent Care thinking he had a pulled muscle in his lower back, worst case it would be a kidney infection. It turned out that he had a severe staph infection and it quickly evolved into septic shock. Over seven weeks later he is still in ICU continuously fighting to get healthy. He has been through so much. He first had to have his aortic and mitral valves replaced along with removing heart tissue in efforts to get the infection out. He came out of surgery in a medically induced coma. He also had a permanent pacemaker placed a few days later. He remained in the coma for nearly a week. Apart from his heart issues, he was in full organ failure. His liver was the first to recover but his kidneys were so damaged he had to be placed on continuous dialysis. After being brought out of the coma he remained intubated on the ventilator. On April 30th he had a tracheostomy done and was placed on steroids in efforts to strengthen his lungs. His lungs weren’t responding well to the steroids so they did a lung biopsy and placed a chest tube in his right side to drain fluid from the procedure. His kidneys started functioning well enough to get off of the dialysis. After a few days his lungs seem to be doing better so the doctors lowered the breathing support enough for him to be taken off of the ventilator. Meanwhile they discovered he had a G.I. bleed and had to be given blood. He then developed hypoxia and “blood transfusion associated graft versus host disease” and had to be placed back on the ventilator and in a medically induced coma again with a chest tube in his left side. The doctors finally located the G.I. bleed in his small intestine using capsule endoscopy but were unable to reach it with the endoscopy scope to cauterize it. Blood being used now is going through a special procedure in order to avoid the reaction he previously had. The doctors brought him out of the coma and everything is currently being very closely monitored hoping the GI bleed will resolve itself without any further GI procedures. Bubba has a long road to recovery ahead. Unfortunately this means we are going to have a lot of medical expenses and loss of wages during recovery, we are asking for help in any way you can, whether that’s a donation or a prayer. Thank you for all of your support and love.