Lea suffered acute decompression of the lungs early this morning, caused by low blood pressure, low heart rate, and low oxygen absorption. She is sicker than she has been for quite some time. She has retained a great deal of fluid, and is again quite puffy and swollen. She is heavily sedated to eliminate the possibility that she is feeling any pain.

Throughout the day today the medical staff worked to adjust her medications to get her situation under control. She received two units of blood overnight, and lots of extra fluid to diffuse the effects of any problems in the blood stream. She has had Systemic Inflammation Respiratory Syndrome since the onset of pancreatitis, but now also has Adult Respiratory Distress Syndrome.

Dr Kirton also changed the dressing in Lea’s wound today, but decided not to close her up since it might cause her more stress. He is thinking he may close her up on Friday if she stabilizes by then. Surgically she is doing really well, The healing continues at a rapid pace. The problems we now face, while life threatening, are not totally unexpected.

The reactions Lea is having are often experienced in cases such as hers. There are problems that have to be confronted with each one of the organs on the long, slow road to recovery. Not everyone has all symptoms, but the symptoms she has had are not unusual in these type cases.

For the past three days the respiratory therapist has been getting small to moderate amounts of a pale yellow secretion from the lungs when they check for fluid in the lungs every two hours. They have made cultures out of the secretion each day, and know which bug is growing in there. They are treating her with antibiotics to get the bacteria under control.

This afternoon the resident doctor decided to have a specialist come in to examine Lea to determine a course of action, since they had been unable to get her respiratory problems resolved. She appears to be in panic mode, probably because of the level of pain she was experiencing, and was breathing way too fast. They gave her heavier doses of medications to get her to relax, but she kept fighting the machine.

The specialist arrived late afternoon and set up a large monitoring device next to her bed, and put a lighted scope with TV camera down through the ventilator tube into her lungs. As the camera traveled down into the lungs, he showed me the mucous build up in each of the chambers. It isn’t a huge build up, and the outlook for treating it looks good.

Tonight they are going to place a catheter back into her heart, so they can monitor with more accuracy what the heart is doing and how it is performing. They are going to put her into a special bed designed for pneumonia patients, that lets the patient be rolled from side to side and top to bottom, to move the fluids around in the lungs in an attempt to keep them from pooling and causing further problems.

As the next step in treatment of the pneumonia, they need to be able to control her breathing, which they can’t do while she is attempting to breathe on her own. They will give her a chemical to paralyze her so the machine can take control of her lungs and maximize the healing capabilities of the ventilator.

These steps were going to take them a few hours to accomplish, so I am going to try to get a couple hours of sleep before going back over to be with Lea. I had a heart to heart talk with her tonight, and reminded her that I want her to stay with me, but that I understood that she has some wonderful rewards awaiting her in heaven, and if she wants to go, she should go. I release her.

And, then I prayed, my forehead on hers, my hand on her arm, that the Lord’s will be done, and that He would open up my heart and mind to receive the wisdom He is giving me. I prayed that if it is His will that He should take her at this time, that He do so quickly to ease her pain. But, if it is His will to return her to us, that He grant her miraculous healing so she can get past this pain as quickly as possible.

We appreciate your prayer support, and have seen miracles worked here in this hospital. Even is Lea should go to her reward from this place, what has happened here over the past four weeks will not be forgotten. There have been too many hearts touched, and too many souls stirred. God is truly at work through this difficulty!

In His service,

Larry