Jeff Bass

Welcome to our CaringBridge website. We are using it to keep family and friends updated in one place. We appreciate your support and words of hope and encouragement. Thank you for visiting.  Once we realized that Jeff's situation was going from initial attack into extended attack, we decided to keep everyone posted here on this site.  Jeff REALLY appreciates everything everyone has said and done for him so far.  It could be a lengthy assignment -- but, he always has been at his best when things were at the worst.  Here's the backstory.  Shauna and I (probably mostly Shauna after we get this all set up) will then add daily updates until he can come home!


Jeff was lifeflighted from Garden Valley in mid-Sept with severe back and chest pains.  Of course, everyone thought and focused on “heart attack”…which it wasn’t.  He came home with a diagnosis of "gastritis".  He continued to deteriorate for the next 6 weeks.  We (and doctors) could not figure out what was wrong with him.  Last Tuesday (Oct. 18), he woke up and was unable to move his legs. The ambulance took him to the downtown St. Luke’s ER in Boise.   

An MRI ordered by the ER found a staph infection wrapped around a cracked vertebrae on his upper spine (old injury from jumping, that the staph found a way to attach to).  The MRI also showed other infections that the staph was attacking around his body:  knee, lower spine, aorta, lungs).  Neurosurgeon did emergency surgery that evening on the one critical infection latched to his spine.  Got most of this infection out, but could not get all, as it was too latched on.  The surgeons did not take out infection around his aorta - too risky.  


* Navigating the site can be a bit odd at first, if you've never been on a caringbridge account before.  From the home page there will be a series of journal entries.  We did one entry that covered October 19-24.  There are daily updates after that.  Look under the journal tab, and there is an option to view - "new to old" or "old to new".


** One more thing!  Just wanted to clarify, we aren't soliciting donations for Jeff.  No need for that!  We are just posting updates.   You may donate if you wish, but it is strictly to support the Caring Bridge site -- which is a great, free service, and can probably use the support.  Thanks all!