Donna Uher

Starting this Caring Bridge site for Donna to keep friends and family updated on her condition.  Here is a brief background for those of you that may not know how she ended up in critical condition in Methodist’s ICU.


 Sunday - July 2, 2017


Donna was up all night, not feeling well.  Vomiting and in pain in the abdomen and back.  As the hours went on, she only felt worse.  She and Dave were planning on going to church, but Donna said she could not go..….told Dave to go, but take his phone with him in case she needed to call him.  Thankfully, Dave insisted that they go to the hospital.  They started out in Fremont where they diagnosed Donna with a blocked bile duct with a gallstone.  She was transported to Methodist by ambulance. 


 Two days of extreme pain and not being able to breathe.  Monday afternoon, they did surgery to remove the gallstone and turns out, there was no gallstone, only “sludge and debris”, which was removed and a stint placed in the duct to allow it to drain properly.   At this time, she was diagnosed with a very SEVERE case of Pancreatitis. 


 By Monday night, with encouragement from Dave, they moved Donna to the ICU…..thank goodness!  Her kidneys were shutting down, her blood gasses and electrolytes were all screwed up and she could not breathe.  Her body was in septic shock.  She was put on a ventilator, several different drugs via IV, and a special dialysis machine that they use on patients when they cannot tolerate an intermittent dialysis due to their unstable condition. 


 Donna has been in the ICU and unconscious for over a week, but finally in the last few days, her condition has shown small improvements……still critical, but more stable.  “Improving” is a word that we didn’t hear for the first 5 days in the ICU, so when one of the Doctors finally used the word……we were very thankful!  Her condition is still a day by day thing, they are sure to tell Dave daily that there are so many different complications that could arise that would set her back, but we are just praying that she keeps taking small steps forward and no big steps back.  She has graduated to the intermittent dialysis machine that they expect to continue at least 3 times a week.    Over the last few days, they have also been doing “breathing trials” to see if she will tolerate breathing without the ventilator, she is not where she needs to be yet, but we are praying that she will get there soon.


 Dave has been spending most of his wake hours at the hospital with Donna to make sure he is there when the Doctor’s come in to keep up with her condition.  He drives home each night and is back at the hospital by 6am.  Between all of the family, one of us are staying with her each night, although she has one on one care in the ICU, we just feel better knowing that someone is with her at all times. 


 We will post updates on this site when there are changes in her condition.  As of right now, Donna cannot have any visitors.  Thank you so much for all of your well wishes, calls, messages and especially prayers, that she will recover fully from this awful illness.