The Story...one week later

Our hope is for this to be a log of our journey, a release of our thoughts and feelings and a way for those of you that love our mom to remain updated as to her condition.

Monday October 19th: My Dad calls to tell me that Mom is to be taken to the hospital as per her MS doctor via the emergency room to be admitted. He wants me to come and help to dress her and prepare her. When I arrived her condition had become such that we needed to call the ambulance to come. They arrived to find her oxygen and heart levels dangerously low. They loaded her in the ambulance and my Dad went as I followed in my car behind calling my brother, sister and close family to come as soon as they could. After arriving she started to become coherent and could talk to us. One of the first things she was concerned with was pistachio icecream. It made us smile during a time we needed comfort that she was still with us. They quickly determined by her symptoms that she was in Septic Shock. A serious condition that we knew little about. There was to be determined an underlying cause that put her body in shock that they were working to diagnose.
They immediately started her on antibiotics and other medications, it then was neccessary to sedate her and put in a breathing tube as she was admitted to the ICU. Mom received a blessing from Dad and Andy. We began our vigil.

Tuesday October 20th: The doctors have determined that she has a very serious double bacterial pneumonia....life threathening in and of itself. We had lots of family support today. Uncle Dave, my mom's closest brother flew in from Colorado in the morning to be with us. Nancy my mom's only sister stayed close and Vicki, our dearest and oldest family friend served as a great comfort as the doctor's optimistically gave us a 50% chance of recovery. A very trying and emotional day....a day that we all sought the comfort of the priesthood. (Thank you Uncle Dave).The heart looks good and the lungs are as well as can be expected considering that they are full of pneumonia. Concerns for other organs. She has had a blood transfusion by now to get rid of the all the bad blood that was in her system poisoning her organs. We pray for good reports from the Dr.

Wednesday October 21st: Things look to be showing improvements. The Dr gives us a hopeful 80% recovery. Her kidneys are doing better and her liver enzymes are lower. We all feel relief. She is still pretty drugged but is responding to us with head nods. Andy and I spent some time with her telling her how much we love her and how proud we are of her. She is a fighter! Andy tells her that it is no mistake that she is our mom....we chose her and wanted to be together as this family. A tear streams out of the corner of her eye. We know she's there and knows we are too. Andy asks her if she wants him to come and read to her, she shakes her head no. I tell her that we will come and just talk to her. She shakes her head no....too much talking I guess. She nods yes to us just being with her. Grandpa and Granny Dixon are here with us today. We are happy they can be with their daughter. It's hard for all of us to see her this way. We pleased with the progress.

Thursday October 22nd: Everyday we are hopeful that she can come completely out of sedation and have the breathing tube removed. Today is yet again not the day nor will tomorrow be. They are feeding her through a tube a low calorie diet. Digestion is the last thing that your body works on in a condition like this. We feel she will be the most comfortable with this regimine. We are still getting updates from the doctors daily. She continues to improve with organ function. They are concerned with these "spells" that she is having that increase her heart rate and affect her blood pressure. Noone can determine the cause.

Friday October 23rd: We are so happy when we learn her fever is down.... the infection is leaving her body and she has been breathing all on her own for nearly 8 hours. By the time I see her again in the evening she has had another spell in which they had to put her on 100% oxygen and her fever has spiked again. As she became stable they were able to wean her off again closer to 60%. Still showing overall improvement, just no understanding of the effect of the episodes on her heart. They go back and forth in telling us of a possible heart attack. At this point they refute that.

Saturday October 24th: It's official we are all baffled. The doctors have been doing a series of heart tests which are showing nothing. Everything is looking good, we are working on getting an understanding on what is happening with her heart. Three days with the spells and noone is able to determine the cause. This is our hurdle today. We are praying for the doctors to be able to have the inspiration and understanding of this condition and how to treat it.

Thank you for all of the support that you have offered our family. We appreciate the concern for our mom as well as us. Your prayers mean everything.