Marci Stogdill

As many of you know, my sister, Marci Stogdill, woke up in the middle of the night on April 29th and was very sick. My brother in law, Lonnie couldn’t get her to her feet and they ended up calling an ambulance to come to the house to get her. When they arrived, her blood pressure was around 40 over 16. They got her to Newton ER, where the nurse was scared for her life and knew she needed to get to Des Moines. It took several hours for them to stabilize her blood pressure before they were even able to move her there. She arrived in the ICU in Des Moines about noon that day. When she got there, the nurse on staff, or I like to call her Marci’s angel, was working non stop back and forth from noon until 7 pm constantly resuscitating her. From pushing gallons of iv fluids, to pushing blood pressure meds to helping her breath. It was chaotic. That nurse didn’t leave that room for 7 hours. Not to eat, not to use the bathroom. The surgeons and doctors came in and told us my sister was in septic shock and they didn’t know why. They did and MRI and Cat scan after they got her blood pressure just stable enough and found nothing. My other sister, Michelle and her family drove up from Kansas City, as there was a very high chance she wasn’t going to be with us much longer. About 9 pm that night, the surgeons made a decision to do an exploratory surgery, even though her blood pressure wasn’t ideal for doing a surgery. It was open her up to see what’s going on, or she is going to die. During the surgery they found internal damage that led them to remove some of her organs that were completely dead. When your blood pressure is low for that long, your body makes a choice to only push blood to your main organs, so these others weren’t getting any. This would start a road to a very long recovery.
She remained in the ICU with delirium for several days. The doctors still had no answers as to why she became sick in the first place and with her vitals still unstable, and the delirium she was experiencing, she remained in the ICU until May 5th, when they were able to move her to a regular room. She had a very large incision that remained open. Due to the nature of the infection through her body, they didn’t close her back up, they installed a wound vac that she would have to carry around with her while the incision started to heal from the inside out.
On May 12th she was stable enough to be able to go home. However, she still had a very long recovery ahead. This would mean a home health nurse would have to come 3 times a week to change her dressing on her incision and help with other things she needed medically. This continued until June 29th. The surgeons are able to do another surgery this August to do some reconstruction of her organs and will remove her gall bladder during that time as well. This isn’t over, and she is a fighter, but this whole situation has changed her whole life.
This unexplainable sickness has taken a toll on both Marci, who is only 47, and her husband Lonnie. During these past few months bills and extra expenses are adding up . Then in August, with another surgery coming, it is just going to get worse and become more burdensome. I started this page because many of you have asked how you could help. Well, Marci wouldn’t ask anyone, so I am asking. Please keep Marci and Lonnie in your daily prayers and if you could donate anything to help them out with their expenses it would be greatly appreciated.