About a week ago, Jim contracted a bug that caused congestion and a cough (Rhinovirus). The coughing led to aspiration which must have occurred sometime around Tues or Wed, which developed into aspiration pneumonia. His condition quickly worsened.
In the ER Fri morning, the situation initially seemed pretty dire, and intubation was a possibility. At a very crowded gate at the Albuquerque airport, I was being asked by the ER doctor if Jim would want to be intubated. Additionally he was asking other end-of-life questions due to Jim’s condition when he arrived and how he presented at the ER. I and Dolores and Tom made it very clear that Jim wanted every means possible exhausted to preserve his life.
After spending the day in the ER, he was moved to the ICU in the evening. High-flow oxygen and strong broad-spectrum antibiotics were administered. After conducting several tests and analyzing lab results, the root cause of his illness was determined.
Jim had his first meal in 48 hours – Sat night and was watching football games Saturday afternoon including Mizzou.
Thanks to Dolores and Tom, for being there through out all of this as I struggled to get back here from New Mexico (Project Defending Life’s events) in the midst of the air traffic shutdown that unfortunately occurred on the same day, – impacting more than 2000 flights (100,000 passengers) with cancellations and delays.
It was like the perfect storm between the critical need for me to get back to Jim while fighting against all of the flight cancellations and delays.
The flight I was rescheduled to be on to get here more quickly, boarded and unboarded twice and the delays announced at first was for an hour than three hours and after the second time we had to leave the plane, it became clear we may not be getting out of there till the following day. The flight would be going to Dallas though, which was the heart of the air traffic shutdown – maybe taking another day to get a connection out of there.
I along with some friends and Alex had been looking for other flights and as soon as you’d find one moments later it would be gone because 100k others were doing the same thing.
Finally at 7 pm roughly I canceled my flight – after rescheduling on the earliest flight I could find the next day (yesterday) on another airline with a 15 minute connection in Denver to Kansas City. Then rented a car in KC and drove to Columbia.
Upon canceling that flight though it made me feel defeated. All I could do at this point was turn it over to God. Thats when I posted on FB that Jim needed a lot of prayers. FB is the lone avenue I had to get the most people praying for him.
Once in Denver, I had to run to get from gate C 45 to gate C 23 with 15 minutes till departure. I could hear them calling my name on the intercom as I got closer. I ran up to the airline representative like a crazy person saying “I’m here. I’m here!” As I stepped onto the plane, they announced, “The last passenger has boarded.”
If I wouldn’t have made that flight, it would’ve been a few hours more of waiting and on standby. I was so happy. While on that flight I was getting positive updates on Jim from Tom and could see he was making good strides forward.
Tom and Dolores gave great direction and were able to relay information and called me several times allowing me to communicate with the doctors throughout. Also ensuring that they treated this aggressively.
I am so very thankful for them and the many hours they spent at the hospital with him all day Friday and several hours Saturday. It made all the difference.
Running for Life 