The Blog of mamapolo

Dear EP friends:

I am writing to you to request your prayers, right now, and ongoing, to fervently request God's mercies for my dear Tim, who is battling physical demons in the ICU unit at this moment.

Surgery on Monday went well, and while he was weak and weary, he was responsive and alert on Tuesday after they woke him from the sedation and removed the breathing tube.

He became agitated and confused Tuesday evening, and began trying to climb out of his bed and attempting to pluck the tubes from his body, a catheter, a chest tube to drain the accumulated fluids from his chest cavity, oxygen, the IV heparin lock to allow them to inject antiobiotics.

For twelve hours or so, he would only respond or listen to me, and if I left the room to use the rest room, I had to hurry back because he became violent again. They finally administered Haldol to calm him - and he had a worse reaction to that, to the point where they had to put him in restraints and put huge mittens that look like white boxing gloves on his hands. He kept crying out, "Help me, Les, help me..." but didn't hear me when I tried to calm him. It was like someone in a horror of a nightmare who can't wake up - nearly all day today.

Finally this afternoon, they stopped the Haldol at my request and tried Ativan, which blessedly worked and he slept. The doctors decided they wanted a CAT scan to rule out any problems in the brain, and for some reason, when they took him down for the test, his respiratory system crashed - rate of respiration went way up, oxygen levels went way down. I was just coming back to the ICU after the half-hour they said he'd be gone for the test, and they blocked entry because of 'a code.' The code was my husband. Even though I stood outside the ICU doors and kept repeating to myself that there were forty patients in there, I knew in my gut it was Tim.

The emergency pulmonologist and the nurses worked on him for about a half-hour and they reinserted the breathing tube. He is now sedated and calm and breathing satisfactorily - oxygen levels back up, respiration rate down. The problem now is the fluids in the lungs, and they will do bronchoscope tomorrow to suction out those fluids through the breathing tube.

The one thing established during the combative stage was that my husband is strong and a fighter. Please take a moment to ask for mercies for him? He is a wonderful husband, a good man, and an excellent human being, and we do not have enough of those to spare one.

But in your prayers, ask that if this is his time and he is needed elsewhere, if it is time for him to graduate to the next level, ask that he be taken gently and not put through more pain and torment.

And pray for me as well, please.

Thank you.

Mamapolo