what a week

i have never been so happy to see sunday as i was when i woke up this morning. a new week. i welcome you with open arms. last week was one of the longest in my life.

it all began monday morning around 3:30am when dan woke up with a fever of 101.9. not good. it only got worse by 5:30am when he woke up again and had major (i mean major) oozing from his surgery site. not good at all. after an early morning call to his doctor, who, of course was in utah all week, he suggested we call the office and be seen by the other shoulder guy in the practice. we dropped dan off at the dr at 10:00am by 11:30 he was admitted to the hospital. 

by 6:00 the new surgeon arrived to preform yet another operation on dan. this time to go in and remove the infection that was protruding out of his shoulder. by 8:00 dan was resting and the doctor had informed us that there was a very vicious infection in dan's shoulder, however, it will take about 48 hours until they know exactly what type of infection and how they are going to treat it.

fast forward to wednesday evening. the blood cultures finally came back and showed a staph inefction. ugh, staph...that evil, wicked word. fortunately it is a strand of staph that is sensitive to a variety of antibiotics. this is a good thing. so by 8:00 dan was finally sent home after 3 long, long days.

on thursday morning dan and i went to his appointment at the center for infectious disease to learn how we were going to treat this nasty infection. he was given a pick line (a portable iv)  in his upper arm in the hospital...so at the appointment we learned that i will have to administer the antibiotics through his pick line 3 times a day for the next 6 weeks.

the best case scenario (which we are expecting to happen) is that the antibiotics will do the trick and kill all the infection. dan will be back to normal in 6 weeks and we will put this entire mess behind us.

the worst case scenario is that the infection has already harbored itself to the metal plate in dan's shoulder. if that is the case they will have to go in and remove all the hardware, wait at least 8-10 weeks for the infection to be completely eradicated, then go back and and do the entire shoulder surgery all over again. obviously we are not even thinking about this scenario. we are staying positive in this house.

so far everything is looking good. there are no signs that the infection has come back, thank goodness! we go back to his surgeon tomorrow to make sure all looks good. please say a prayer for dan that he will continue to feel good and that in 6 weeks time he will be back to himself!