Paul Kirkpatrick Medical Fund

On September 29, a few days after returning from vacation Paul Kirkpatrick went to an Urgent Care with labored breathing thinking he was coming down with the same upper respiratory infection that his wife, Carla, had gotten, while they were out of town. Unbeknownst to Paul he had a heart attack in the previous 24-48 hours and didn’t know it. The Urgent Care sent him to the ER at Grady Memorial in Chickasha, OK who did testing. After their results they decided to send Paul, via ambulance, to Oklahoma Heart Hospital North that same day. Once there they told him he would have a heart catheterization and echocardiogram the next day. Carla and his oldest daughter, Myca, were settling down in his room with him to go to sleep that night when 5+ nurses came flying into the room. Apparently he had gone into A Fib and his heart rate was over 204bpm. It took 3 tries of medicine and then two shocks from a defibrillator to reset his heart rhythm. This was the first day.

Sunday, September 30: After the echocardiogram and heart catheterization Paul learned that he needed a quadruple bypass. Which they scheduled for Tuesday.

Tuesday, October 2: Paul had a CABG quadruple bypass surgery where they used veins from his left leg to replace 3 of the 4 bypasses and the other they took from an artery from his chest wall. Surgery went well and they were able to get him off the ventilator 4 hours after surgery.

Wednesday- Friday, October 3-5: Paul is still in ICU and is being moved back and forth between the chair and bed, but is having problems with blood pressure dropping. He hasn’t been able to walk since surgery at all and is extremely tired.

Saturday, October 6: 3:15am An alarm starts to go off in his room that hasn’t gone off before. The nurse comes in to see if maybe he has low magnesium levels, which is what triggered his A Fib incident. The nurse just gets the bag hooked up when Paul goes into VTach and they call a “Code Blue”. They have to do CPR, give epinephrine, defibrillate, and intubate him. He still had a few smaller VTach runs afterwards and they put him on some IV meds for it. He ended up being ventilated for 7 hours.

Sunday, October 7: We met a new doctor who made the call that Paul would need an internal defibrillator installed.

Tuesday, October 9: Paul gets his new ICD/Pacemaker put in.

Wednesday, October 10: Paul takes first steps since before his quadruple bypass surgery with much assistance.

Thursday, October 11: Physical Therapy advises us that Paul needs to go to a Rehabilitation facility for at least a week to regain his strength before he can come home. He has chosen the Mercy Rehabilitation Facility that’s right down the road from the Oklahoma Heart Hospital so he can be close to his doctors in case anything happens.

Paul has been a faithful preacher of the good news of Jesus Christ for over 30 years.  He is currently the minister for the Rush Springs, Ok church of Christ.  While the church will will continue to cover his salary while he is recovering, obviously he will have additional medical bills to cover, and his family will have the added expenses of travel and meals to be near him.  If you can assist in helping to defray these added expenses it would be greatly appreciated.