Joan Wente

Joan's journey began on March 30th with a routine colonoscopy. After an EXTREMELY rough weekend, she was found in her home Sunday afternoon April 2nd, and was transferred by ambulance to the Appleton Hospital.  After some lab work and CT it was discovered that she had an infection/abscess in her stomach and possibly a perforated colon, and needed to be transferred to the St. Cloud Hospital for care.  Joan was admitted to St. Cloud Hospital late Sunday night and was treated with I.V antibiotics until Thursday morning  April 6th, she then was  released  back to Appleton Hospital into swing bed care until she felt strong enough to go home.  All was going well in Appleton, her white blood count was normal, she was walking the halls, she was having no pain and was projected to go home the following Monday.  Saturday, April 8th she started to have terrible pain in her right lower quadrant, diarrhea and temperature.  They ran some tests and it showed worsening of her infection, so Saturday evening she was transferred back to St. Cloud. 
Tuesday afternoon,  April 11th  was the date Joan had surgery to repair her bowel.... the doctor removed the right side of her colon and a softball sized abscess.  The surgery itself went well, but Joan has had a lot of trouble since then.  The kids were allowed to see her on Tuesday evening,  she was having a lot of trouble communicating, not opening her eyes and trouble breathing.  She was put on a Bi-pap machine to help her breath, it is a lot like a c-pap machine that people use for sleep apnea.  Wednesday, April 12th things continued decline she was less responsive,  started retaining fluid.  Doctors ran many lab and xray tests with some results still not final.  During the early morning hours of April 13th, Joan was transferred to ICU and put on a ventilator.  Thursday was a day of many tests, a Head CT was done right away Thursday morning, and around 1130 Joan had a seizure.  Many more tests were ordered by the Neurologist along with a Head MRI and EEG to look for reasons why Joan was not waking up and signs of a stroke. Both showed that she did not have a recent stroke, but Joan still was not responding to commands or painful stimuli.  Late Thursday afternoon they did a lumbar puncture to look for infection in the brain.  It did show increased white blood cells and Friday morning they changed her antibiotics and by Friday evening it seemed like things were coming around.  Friday they did some breathing trials with the vent and she started intermittently moving her extremities for the nurses, and by Friday evening she opened her eyes!