Update:Awaiting Medevac To NNMC (Bethesda)

Hi All;

Maura here, and sorry for the long delay since my last post. As many may know already, things took a downward turn after my last post. However, after many cascading medical challenges, Bill is finally recovering from his original injuries, and sequellae of his surgeries. His course was complicated by a need to revise the screw placement from the original spinal surgery. Then the surgical site became infected, the infection spread to his blood, he developed a blood clot in his lung, and he developed kidney failure. So, not only was Bill very, very ill (sepsis) but he had to return to surgery 3 more times in order to open the surgical site and place a wound vac to draw out potentially infected debris, cut away infected tissue and washout the infected surgical site with antibiotics. He spent some time in the Intensive Care Unit, but finally, last Monday the surgeons were able to close the surgical site.

Since then he has stabilized with no fever, no blood transfusions since the day after his last surgery, and his renal failure is resolving. He has a central IV, called a PICC line, that will be used to continue to give him IV antibiotics for at least 6 weeks, afterwhich he will be on oral antibiotics for a year. He is on IV blood thinner (heparin) so that he won't form additional blood clots while his existing lung clot resolves. However, he is going to be transferred to Bethesda Naval Hospital to continue a little more inpatient care. We believe the transfer will be by medevac on Tuesday!

So, while there were many frightening downturns and challenges over the past 2 weeks, he got throught it. Now he can focus on recovery with physical therapy and occupational therapy , and ongoing medical care to manage the infection and blood clot. In the end, he survived and is getting stronger daily.

So that is the summary of events, and thank you all for your support and prayers. I apologize for not posting, but events were coming so quickly and I just couldn't manage to report his status before it was changing again. Thanks for bearing with my delinquent entries.

See you soon on the East Coast at least!

Maura (for Bill)