My parents, Richard and Shelly Choate, could really use some help right now. I know this is a difficult time for everyone, but any donations (as well as prayers) would be greatly appreciated, as Rick (my dad) is in pretty serious condition and it will be a long road to recovery, several hospital bills to pay, and a significant time off work for the both of them. This is a trying time for them. We appreciate anything you can do. The Story: About a week and a half ago, Rick was coming down with what seemed like the flu. It all happened so suddenly, but he had cold chills, vomiting and body aches....all the things you'd normally think were flu related. Well, basically overnight he took a turn for the worst and started displaying signs of shortness of breath. It wasn't long before he was starting to turn blue and purple because of the inability to breathe and collapsed on the floor, which caused my brother to call the ER and get him seem immediately.  Upon going to the ER and getting several tests and loads of news both good and bad, this is the basic of what we now know: He had some kind of scratch or cut that bacteria got into and started an infection, which turned to staph. That staph infection spread through his body and entered his blood stream, making him septic. He has an artificial valve in place from a previous heart condition and the infection attached itself to the heart valve. The reason for this is because our body tries to fight off infection or anything else wrong with our body by attacking foreign bodies. The valve, no matter how useful or functional, will still always look foreign to the body and will be the first thing to get attacked since it is not recognized as part of the body itself. This is what happened to him. Because his blood was full of infection it caused the vessels to loosen up, so to speak, and this made them less stable and caused the blood pressure to drop significantly.   In order to completely fix this problem, the doctors would have to regulate blood pressure, push antibiotics through him to regulate and hopefully stop the infection, and do surgery to replace his valve. Here's the problem: In order to perform surgery, the have to push a significant amount of blood thinners through his body to thin the blood enough to do heart surgery. When they sent him for a CT they noticed a bleed on his brain. Although this bleed was very small, when you add blood thinners it becomes a big bleed and a very dangerous thing to do. He could stroke out and that would be a whole other problem we would have to face. So, they decided to see if they could amp up the antibiotics to get rid of this infection and buy him some time with a temporary pace maker, ventilator, and blood pressure medication to keep him stable while this bleed heals itself. There is  no way of knowing for certain how long it will take to heal itself but they estimate around 6 or 7 weeks.  What's 6 or 7 weeks compared to a lifetime, when the other options are not looking too great, right? Come to find out that if you are on antibiotics for that extended of a period it really starts to damage your kidneys and liver. So after a roller-coaster of emotions, telling a doctor that if we have to choose between no surgery and dying and doing surgery and possibly dying that we choose the latter, and this enormous, exhausting waiting game, here is what they have left us with.... As of today they  have decided that he has remained stable enough the last 4 or 5 days to go ahead and send him to Denver UCHealth to be examined and to further his care and hopefully schedule him for surgery. In the last few days they have been able to lower his sedation significantly, take him off almost everything except antibiotics, and the temporary pace maker is not needed but they added one anyway to keep him stable during the flight for life trip to Denver.  We got a call a couple hours ago that he has arrived in Denver and they are doing a ton of tests, getting updated and analyzing everything to proceed the best they can.  Somehow, either during the flight or when they put the temp pace maker in, they punctured a hole in his lung and it collapsed so they are currently working to fix that. For now, we sit and wait to see what the next step is. Now, while all of this has been going on, my mother, Shelly, has been patiently sitting by his side making scary choice after choice trying to do what is best for him since he is unable to do so. Because of the scare of the corona-virus they have limited the visitors ability to come into the hospital to almost none so she was unable to leave the room for fear of not being able to go back and see him. When he seemed to do the best was when she was there anyway. Before, when they were making her go home at night he seemed to always crash without her there but since she had started staying the night and talking to him all through the day he seemed to start improving significantly.  Well, today as they gave her the good news about sending him to Denver they also informed her that she will be unable to sit with him and be by his side. She is a strong woman, but even the strongest have weak moments and she is really struggling with having the love of her life all the way up in Denver not having a clue what is happening to him and nobody there to comfort him or be with him when he gets out of surgery or anything. We don't know the next time we will even see him. We can't call him to talk to him or anything. This is a tough time for our family, but especially for my mom.  While I know everyone is having trouble with the C-virus spreading all over and half the people we know are unable to work, I feel for my mother because on top of all this mess in the world she is also dealing with all of this. She could really use some help because this will be a long road ahead. After the surgery he will have extensive medical bills to pay on top of all the bills they already have to pay monthly . My mother has missed a lot of work and I'm sure will be missing a lot more through all this and obviously my father has as well so they have very limited income at the moment. If you can donate and help it would be so appreciated. If you too are pressed for money it is totally understandable, but please just keep them in your prayers during this tough time. Thank you so much.