dan

so today is june 5...almost 4 months after dan's shoulder surgery. 4 long, long months. i thought i would give you an update on that husband of mine. i am very happy to report that after 4 surgeries, 2 hospital stays, a staph infection and a c-diff infection, dan is finally on the road to recovery!! hallelujah!

things were looking up a few weeks ago. on the morning of may 11th, dan went in to get the pickline taken out of his arm. 6 long weeks of antibiotics, 3 times a day was finally coming to an end! what a great day that was. everything seemed to be going really well. we had his good friend jim's wedding that saturday so we had a wonderful weekend with our friends. then sunday night things when downhill yet again. he started to feel bad sunday evening and woke up monday morning with severe flu-like symptoms and a fever. so dan went back into the hospital monday afternoon so they could figure out what the heck was going on. after many, many tests they figured out that he had cdiff. an infection that wreaks havoc on your intestines but can commonly occur when someone is on antibiotics like dan was. apparently antibiotics are a double edged sword. they do a great job of killing all the bad bacteria in your body, but they can also kill the good bacteria that helps your body fight off other infections. who knew? so that was the case here...the antibiotics killed the staph but also killed some of the good bacteria in dan's body which let the cdiff in. and boy did it attack him with a vengeance. think the flu times 10. the doctors at st. john's had him stay overnight because the infection can be very contagious. the only good thing about that is that he got his own room...he was in an isolation room and i had to wear a gown and gloves to even be in the room with him. it seemed pretty intense but they released him the next day. he battled the cdiff for the next week or so but is finally feeling back to normal.

as for his shoulder, he has started doing rehab once a week and his physical therapist says he is doing great and way ahead of schedule. says he has amazing flexibility in his shoulder already and that he should be playing golf by august! finally some good news for dan! he also saw the surgeon on monday after rehab so he could check on his incision. it is about 90% closed up...again, excellent news. the dr had warned dan that if the incision did not close up on it's own he would have to open him back up yet again...so hearing that the incision is closing up nicely on it's own was music to our ears!

it's been a very challenging year for us thus far, but we are so happy to have the old dan back and we're looking forward to all the good things to come...like baby #3!!!! thank you all for your thoughts and prayers, you will neve know how much they helped us!