Dan Schar

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Hi Family and Friends,

We have been overwhelmingly blessed by all the love and
concern that everyone is pouring out towards our Dad, Dan Schar.  However, since he has so many people that
love him, it’s a challenge to keep up with updating all of you.  So we will be posting updates on the Caring
Bridge website that will keep everyone informed.  It’s also a place where you can post messages
for him that we can read to him when he is feeling up to it.

Some of you know that my Dad has not quite had as much energy
as he is used to having over the past few months.  He kept thinking it was just a body getting a
bit old but in reality there were lots of things happening inside him that were
causing the overwhelming exhaustion and pain.

This past week he went in on Tuesday to have a basic carpal
tunnel surgery to try to relieve a little pain in his wrist.  However, when he was recovering his pulse
dropped to 44 and he really was not feeling well.  I took him into the emergency room and a
journey of discovering just how sick he really is ensued.  The multiple tests, scans, biopsy’s etc.
showed an enlarged liver, kidneys that were not functioning, lungs that had
infiltrates giving him pneumonia, a fractured vertebrae and a fractured rib.  All of this seemed quite confusing to us
especially because his white blood cell count had been normal and he didn’t
have any sort of fever. 

We were even more concerned yesterday when he went into full
cardiac arrest.  Fortunately, we were in
the right place and the rapid response team did an amazing job of bringing him
back.  It’s quite a traumatic experience
to see your father literally die before your eyes and then return to you a
couple minutes later.  He has some more
fractures from the experience in his sternum but he is alive and we are
grateful. 

After that experience he was moved into the ICU and put on
pressurized oxygen which helped significantly. 
Unfortunately, he had a bit of a rough night last night and his pulse
went down to 20.  He kept the ICU staff
on their toes.  Today they have added a
beta blocker that has kept the heart more stable and his oxygen saturation has
also improved.  He is now scheduled for a
pace maker to be put in either tomorrow or Monday.

Today we finally received the diagnosis from the oncologist
of Multiple Myeloma.  Not great to hear
that you have cancer and that it is not curable.  However, it is treatable and if managed well
you can continue to live for several years. 
On Monday he will be having some bone marrow taken and they will assess
to what stage the Myeloma has progressed. (Stage I, II or III) 

At this time, he is focusing on getting the acute symptoms
under control and then we will look at the long term treatment.   He needs lots of rest to get over the pneumonia
and get his heart stabilized.   So for
now they are limiting visitors to immediate family. 

Thank you all for your prayers and encouragement.  We will keep you posted as best we can.

Blessings,

Shelley Croudace (Dan’s daughter)