Hi! I'm Christy, Mark's wife. I'll be the one doing the updates and keeping you all in the loop on Mark's care. Thank you so much for caring and for all the prayers and kind thoughts you have sent our way!
What happened:
Mark came down with extreme headache, fever, and chills on April 10th and those symptoms persisted. For the next two weeks, we tried to find what was wrong. Within these two weeks we were in Urgent Care twice, in the clinic twice, and in the ER twice. On Friday, April 21st, during our second visit to the ER, they did a lumbar puncture to attempt a diagnosis.
After the lumbar puncture, things went downhill fast. Mark's headache became extreme, he vomited a few times, and then lost cognition. He was unable to speak clearly or answer questions for the next 24 hours.
Mark was found to have bacterial meningitis. This infection spread to his lungs, brain, blood, and heart. Though he is on the proper antibiotics for this infection it greatly damaged the mitral valve in his heart. He also has some small spots of infection in his brain that the doctors are keeping an eye on.
Treatment:
The extreme damage of the mitral valve means he needs to have open heart surgery to get it replaced with a mechanical valve. The surgery will hopefully happen on Tuesday, May 2nd, as long as Mark's condition does not worsen in the meantime.
Mark will spend a few days in the hospital afterwards and then come home to continue his course of antibiotics and to heal from the major surgery.
Funds:
One of Mark's work friends kindly suggested that we set up this account. It hadn't crossed our minds before but looking at the cost of our insurance deductable plus the amount of money Mark will lose while on work disability it doesn't hurt to ask for help. Mark is the main provider for our family and though he and I have trouble asking we figure this is a good circumstance to accept the kindness of others.
Thank you so much! Love, The Graces