Joel's road to recovery

Hi, my name is Megan and I'm Joel's fiance. As many of you know, Joel had surgery on February 15, 2024 for an umbilical hernia. It was a lot of work on his part to get to that point- he had to lose weight and quit smoking, but he did it! After having this football sized hernia for YEARS he was finally able to have the surgery that was supposed to stop the constant, daily pain and allow him to be the partner and dad he wanted to be. Unfortunately, that wasn't the case.

The surgery took 7 hours instead of 3, however the repair was successful. Joel was in a lot of pain upon discharging, but that was to be expected. He returned home and was scheduled to be off work for two weeks, but as the days passed his symptoms never got better. In fact, they got worse. He experienced violent chills, to the point we had him in several layers of clothes under a heated blanket and he was still unable to stop shaking. When the chills did stop, he experienced hot flashes like I have never seen. Soaking through his clothing, through the bedding, unable to cool down. He also began to experience nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, dizziness, aches, and just overall was experiencing the most pain he has felt.

Through this all, he was meeting with his primary physician weekly who told him "THIS IS JUST YOUR BODY HEALING" and ignored the obvious signs of infection.

Joel had faith in his doctor, he trusted her when she said he was healing, he had already been seeing her for over a year, all with the end goal of being hernia and pain free. Why wouldn't he trust her?

The symptoms continued to worsen, which he told her. He attended an appointment with a surgical nurse who advised him to begin documenting his temperatures. This is how we discovered his fever was usually hovering around 102.5 each day, spiking and dropping as low as 95.6 multiple times each day. This information was shared with his primary. Again her answer was "your body is just healing."

At this point he was ashen, going to work each day and sitting in the office, unable to do anything. Experiencing these symptoms with no relief and no answers. He was becoming a shell of himself before my eyes, and had even stated he just wanted to die. I have never felt so helpless.

Easter came, and luckily we were with family and Joel's sister Allison, who is a nurse immediately knew his condition was far worse than we realized. She told him exactly what labs to request at his next doctor's appointment, so he did.

We got the results back from his labs, and they were terrifying, to say the least. His labs screamed infection, all of them were off, so we waited for his primary to review them, certain that she would FINALLY see he wasn't healing. She reviewed them the next day, said they were all "within normal ranges" (I have pictures of, this is false) and prescribed vitamin c and iron.

After speaking with Allison and the nurse on-call, I rushed Joel to the superior Essentia ER and stayed by his side, as the nurse instructed. She told me I needed to advocate for him, or they would "push him out the door" so I did, and finally, FINALLY we were taken seriously.

Joel was rushed to xray and CT, had an IV put in and blood drawn for labs immediately. They found multiple abscesses- pockets of infection in his stomach, and he was taken via ambulance to the Duluth essentia. The next morning he had an emergency surgery to put in drains so the infection could be removed from his body, and he was also put on multiple broad spectrum antibiotics to fight the infection.

This all could have been avoided.

He begged for help, and his primary did nothing. I have never seen such neglect, and such a lack of care from a physician. She should be ashamed of herself.

Joel will be discharging today with the pumps still in place to drain the infection, and will be unable to return to work for at least two weeks, on top of the 4 weeks he has already missed. On top of that, we have significant medical bills from this emergency. We are planning to sue for malpractice, however that is a very long road, and no guarantee of winning. Essentia has the funds to fight this way more than we do, but we are not giving up.

I refuse to let this doctor do to any other person what she did to Joel. I could have lost him and the most she could be bothered to do was prescribe vitamins- she shouldn't have a license.

In the meantime, anything you are able to donate helps! We get it, in this economy it's hard, but if you can't donate even sharing this post and getting the word out would be super helpful. We are so thankful to our family and friends that have been by our sides through this, and made sure we weren't alone in fighting this.

Thank you so much.

Love,

Joel & Megan

P.S. some of the pictures are graphic, please avoid looking if needed