It’s hard to process and write out this next part of our story. Having Eugene here with me still makes it a little easier. Reflecting back I see so many miracles that I have witnessed. Literally miraculous healing. Unfortunately to see those miracles, I had to go through the following trials. God sure works in mysterious ways, one thing Eugene often talks about is the feeling that he continually had in the hospital that he had more work to do, he never doubted that he would fully heal. Pretty cool… Here we go..
The night of the 29th of January was one of the roughest we had, the entire time we were in the hospital. I slept at the hospital the whole entire time Eugene was there. I rarely ever left his side. It was too painful to. The night shift nurse we had that night made it almost unbearable to be there for both Eugene and I. If you read my previous post you know that Eugene was just put on a 24 hour dialysis machine and that nurses had to come in often to switch out new bags and filters etc. The machine would beep really loud, as well as all the other monitors and IV’s he had when they needed attention. That alone could drive a person crazy. But this particular nurse needed to be known when she came in the room. She was loud, and flipped on the bright light EVERY SINGLE TIME she came in. She told me that I should go home on more than one occasion, even when I told her I was fine and would be better at the hospital then I would at home.
When Eugene “woke” up the next morning if you could even call it that, he was so over exhausted he didn’t even talk. He would barely shake his head yes or no and then would just close his eyes and lay there miserable. I asked him if his pain was bad and without even opening an eye, he barely lifted two fingers to signal a little. Eugene had a feeding tube in, but was still allowed, and encouraged to eat. He just wasn’t though, the special diet they had him on for his kidneys was terrible and he hated the ensure protein shakes that they had there. I was able to get the nutritionist to approve the protein shakes that Eugene loves and always drank at home. My sweet friend Darby brought me some clean clothes, and the protein shakes for Eugene from our house. We rested and slept as much as we could the rest of that day.
The following morning we got a visit from Eugene’s infectious disease doctor. The last time Eugene had surgery to clean his wound they took cultures of the tissue because a lot of the area was necrotic. They ran test on the tissue and found that he had many infections in the area and that a few of them were antibiotic resistant. Antibiotic resistant infections are bad enough on their own, but even worse when you add in that Eugene was in full renal failure and his liver was not fully functioning. Because of the state of his organs, the doctors had to be very careful with any medications they put him on. They did not want anything to make his condition worse. It took time and discussions between pharmacists and many doctors to figure out what the best plan of action was to be able to treat the infections. They found 4 antibiotics that they believed would work together and got him started on them as soon as possible. Because of the infections, Eugene was put on contact advisory. Anyone who came into the room had to put on a plastic gown and gloves. This meant that I had to wear a gown and gloves 24/7 basically until the infections went away. It was miserable to sit in a plastic gown and gloves, sweaty, all day and night long. Sleeping was the worst. This is probably the period of time that I got told I should go home the most, for myself and the baby. I was just not going to leave Eugene’s side. Especially with how fast things were getting worse. I was not going to miss one second of being with my husband.
Eugene’s line for dialysis had been doing well. It would clot from time to time but the nurses were able to clear it and the machines filter and continue his treatments. Because of his symptoms getting progressively worse, they started taking blood more often as well as other various tests needed. Drawing blood was unbelievably hard. Even with Eugene being on dialysis his blood was still like sludge and just did not want to come out. His hemoglobin levels were also really low. He was not producing new blood on his own. They decided to give him two more bags of blood and some iron. His white blood count was continuing to rise and fever was going up as well. The next morning his doctor came in to check on him and asked him what was bothering him the most, the doctor was referring was referring to where his worst pain was, and Eugene's response was that he felt like he wasn't getting any better. It was heartbreaking-especially because in that moment he really wasn't.
Eugene's hemoglobin continued to drop, even after receiving the two bags of blood the night before, so the doctors decided to do another CT scan to see if he had any internal bleeding. We knew at this point that his liver function was declining as well as his already nonfunctioning kidneys, and precaution needed to be taken. They had the nurse inject the contrast straight into Eugene's feeding tube so that his kidneys and liver would not have to process it, and it worked! The CT scan confirmed all the injuries they expected and ruled out any additional as well as abdominal bleeding. Eugene’s liver was getting worse really quickly. His eyes were so yellow it was hard to look at them. His bilirubin levels were off the charts and he was numbers away from having to be added to the liver transplant list. He needed his wound area cleaned out really well after the CT because with contrast being given to him the way they did it, it could cause a bowel movement. They were planning on taking him to the OR again. Because his liver was getting worse and kidneys were showing no improvement, his trauma surgeon decided that doing a bedside wound change would be better than putting him under anesthesia again. I was able to be in the room as they cleaned and changed out the wound vac, this was the first time that I saw the full extent of his injuries.
Eugene had to lay as far over on his right side as far over as he could for them to be able to get to all of the wound. I stood at his head and held his hand during the entire procedure. It took even longer than it usually did when he went to the operating room because Eugene was awake and could feel everything. Eugene would clench my hand so hard that my fingers felt numb at times. They had to stop a few times to give him more pain medicine or just a break to get his heart rate and breathing under control. To clean out the area they first had to remove the old wound vac dresings and pull all the sponges out of the wound. Then they flushed the wound with saline and removed some dead tissue. After having it cleaned out, they had to repack all the tunneling and then rebandage and connect the wound vac. Eugene has a really high pain tolerance and was able to get through the procedure, but not too long after he was shaking and moaning in his sleep from the pain. We fought all the rest of that day and night to get Eugene’s pain back under control. It took a full day to get to the point where he said he felt it was managed again.
That night some of Eugene’s friends from church came and gave him a blessing. This was one of the scariest nights other than the accident for me. Eugene’s trauma surgeon and main doctor over his treatment pulled me over to a computer and went over all of Eugene’s injuries with me. He explained his liver and kidney levels and why they were so troubling. He helped me to understand fully what was going on and I was so unbelievably thankful for this. At the same time he wanted me to understand how critical of a state Eugene was in. That unless his bilirubin levels went down he would need a liver transplant as soon as possible. Eugene was very close to death at this point and I felt it even more than the night of the accident. I spent time reading and trying to understand all that I could about his current condition. This was the first time since the accident and being in the hospital with Eugene that I cried in front of him. I was scared.
The next morning, we experienced a true miracle. To this day there is no explanation of how or why things miraculously changed, but they did. After days of Eugene’s Kidneys and liver progressively getting worse. They both showed huge improvement. I’m not just talking they had a small improvement comparatively to getting worse. I mean HUGE. He was no longer in the scary, may need a transplant, critical condition. Granted, they both were still not working correctly, but after 3 days of nothing but terrible, heartbreaking pain, and bad news we saw some light. This came just in time for his next wound clean out and they were able to take him into the operating room to do it. They found when they did that the bedside wound change didn’t go so well. The right side of his wound wasn’t draining and a pocket of fluid had built up. They were able to drain it, but to be extra cautious with the infection, thy decided to make sure and pack that area with extra sponge. This caused Eugene to be quite a bit sorer than usual. There was talk of possibly taking Eugene off of the continuous dialysis and just doing daily 3-4 hour treatments, but after just a few short hours off of dialysis for his surgery, his potassium and other levels had climbed to a not good place, so they put him right back on the machine. Because of his kidneys not working, his body was not producing new blood. So that night he had to get two more bags of blood. The thing that really sucked about that is every time he got blood, it came with more creatinine and potassium. The dialysis cleans it out, but as of the morning his levels had gone up again. Yet again, we had a few big steps forward and then some backward.
Eugene was determined to get his feeding tube out and he tried really, really hard to eat as much as he could. He made small improvements at each meal for two days and he asked that morning if they would lower his Bolus feeds that he was receiving from the feeding tube because they made him feel over full and even throw up at times. The nutritionist agreed. He was so happy! After all the fiasco's of the previous few days, Eugene’s sweet wound care nurse brought him some of his favorite Vanilla Ice Cream! We have always made an effort to have a weekly date night. So that night we pulled out the laptop and put on a movie. Eugene happily ate his ice cream before falling asleep.
We started to get into a routine. Continuous Dialysis every day as well as physical therapy and occupational therapy. Every 2-3 days he would go down to the operating room for surgery to clean out the wound. He had daily and nightly blood draws and every morning we had our visits from all his doctors and specialists. Unfortunately in his visit to the operating room on February 6th they found a pocket of fluid and puss in his wound again. They were able to drain it and get it cleaned out well, but it was a small step backward in the healing process of that wound. They also removed some more dead tissue and muscle as well as made some small incisions on some of the skin around the wound that is dying to help it ""slough" off on its own. They took Eugene off the continuous dialysis to see how he would do with the daily 4 hour treatments rather than 24 hours. The nephrologist monitored his levels very closely the next 24-48 hours which meant extra blood draws.
The night after that particular surgery, Eugene's fever got up to 104.1, he couldn't take Tylenol because of his liver and the potential damage it could cause. Eugene was freezing, shivering to the point of teeth chattering, but we needed his temperature to go down. The nurse had to remove all his blankets, put him on a cooling blanket, put ice packs under each arm, and a cool cloth on his forehead. He was miserable to say the least and didn't get any sleep that night. They were able to get down and maintain his fever to 99-100 for the next few days. With the fever getting so bad, they had to take new cultures to make sure the infection hadn't moved to his blood. Up until that point it had been contained in the tissue where the wound was located. Those cultures can take up to 72 hours to get the results. He was still on 5 antibiotics and they started him on an antifungal that day as well.
I remember how hard it was at this time. We would take a few steps forward and a few back. But from everyone who I have spoken with that has gone through similar situations, that always seems to be the case. We had been in the ICU for about three weeks at this point and we had no timeline of when he would get out. When I talked to his main doctor about the potential of him being home by the time the baby came the chances seemed slim. At this point my mom had flown to Texas from Washington to help out at the house and get ready for the baby. I had literally not purchased one thing for the baby. Darby was amazing and got tons of things donated for us and was still collecting maternity clothes and baby clothes for us. People from church were dropping off meals to me every night! We had so many people reaching out and helping and though I sat in the hospital room with Eugene who was asleep most of the time, I never once felt alone. I have never felt so strongly in my life the presence of the savior. If you’ve ever read the footprints poem, then, more than any other time in my life I know without a doubt that my Heavenly Father was holding me close and carrying me through on this journey.
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