Update #60

Today, let's cut right to the chase - please pray that the hole in Dave's colon/intestines will close soon. From what I understand (and I may not understand, so my apologies to everyone in the medical field who may be reading this), the drainage from the hole may have partially caused the mesh that was used to cover his injury (under the skin graft) to disintegrate, which means that the doctors will not try to fix the injury site until the drainage is under control. In addition, the hole is preventing doctors from feeding Dave through the tube in his stomach, resorting instead to TPN, which is a nutritional mixture that he receives directly into his blood stream. Although the TPN is helpful in Dave's situation, slowing the drainage flow through the hole in his colon because his digestive system does not have to process the food, it also may cause Dave's digestive system to get lazy from lack of use.

Because Dave cannot have any food or drink in his stomach, Icees and fluids are out of the question - he is back to ice chips again. We did receive permission from his nurse to give him flavored ice chips, using flavored waters and even Gatorade to make the chips, but nothing compares to a nice cold glass of skim milk (Dave's most recent drink request).

All of that to say that the next major step in Dave's recovery is getting the hole to close. Doctors gave three options:

1. The hole closes on its own, which would allow doctors to begin feeding Dave through his stomach again and to move forward with fixing the wound in his side;

2. The hole doesn't close on its own, and doctors wait until he is strong enough to endure surgery again to fix it (much longer process);

3. The hole doesn't close on its own, the doctors don't know if Dave is strong enough to endure surgery, but the drainage is causing enough problems that they do surgery anyway out of necessity (the scariest option).

Please pray hard for option #1.

The positive side to this specific prayer request is that it is a good indication that the infection is coming under control. Dave's white blood cell count dropped from 24 to 18, and his platelets are up to 50. Blood pressure and heart rate are both normal, and Dave is tolerating the pressure support setting on the ventilator very well.

Also on the positive side, the swelling in Dave's left leg is almost completely gone, and a doppler scan (ultrasound) yesterday afternoon showed that he has no new clots. In the words of the vascular nurse doing the scanning, "He has the blood flow of a 19 year-old marathon runner." He seems to be in good spirits and has been tolerating much more movement of his arms and legs.

I'm headed back to Cincinnati this evening until Tuesday evening, so posting will be more sporadic, but I will do my best to keep you updated. Please keep praying - Dave smiles every time we tell him how much support he has all over the country.

His Spirit, His will, His peace, His glory,
Kendahl

PS It doesn't seem fair to me that my picture with Dave is the only one displayed on this site. If you have electronic versions of fun pictures of your favorite memories of/with Dave, please email them to me at klund7 at yahoo.com, and I'll create a slideshow of them for everyone to see. Or, like Jason did, post the link to online photos in the comments section, and I'll download them from there. Thanks!