Thank you all for your prayers and thoughts! We appreciate everyone's texts, calls and emails asking about Roger. Our family and Roger feel the love and greatly appreciate everyone's care and support. It’s been 8 years since we established the first Caring Bridge for Roger’s heart attack. Now, 8 years later, we felt it would be helpful to set it up again to keep folks informed on his current health events. Here is a little summary of what has been happening so far with Roger:
On Friday, August 20, 2021, Roger was very sick and the symptoms seemed like COVID, but they weren’t. We were instructed to go to ER. We chose ER at Baylor Scott and White in Sunnyvale since it was 5:00 pm on a Friday and it’s closer to us. After 9 hours sitting in the waiting room, we left at 3 am and went home. I’ll make this a short story, so the next plan was if he was still feeling sick the next morning we would go to Medical City as his Urologist offices at that hospital. We were led to believe it could be a Urology issue – bladder infection.
We arrived on Sunday morning August 22nd at 10:15 am at Medical City Dallas, and fortunately even though the waiting room was full, they recognized he needed medical attention. So tests were run in the ER and by evening we had a room. Various tests were run throughout the week of August 23-August 27th. Blood tests indicated a high white blood cell count. Blood drawing daily to grow the cultures and antibiotics were started to determine the type of staph infection. We learned that staph infections like to attach to “things” in your body. Roger has a shoulder prosthesis, pacemaker and watchman for his heart. The TEE (Trans Esophageal Echogram) was performed on Friday, August 27th at Medical City. The TEE showed vegetation on the leads to his pacemaker and on the watchman. Series of antibiotics were started and it took 2 weeks for negative blood cultures. Roger’s heart doctors work at Plano Heart Hospital and it was determined that we should transfer to Plano to be under the care of his heart doctors. Took 6 days for a bed to become available and he moved last Saturday, September 4th.
Monday, September 6th Roger had severe headaches, nausea, and high blood pressure so the Plano Hospitalists ordered a CT Scan of his head and determined he had two brain bleeds (stroke). This type of stroke did not affect his speech, cognition, or him physically. We immediately were moved to ICU. He has had 3 CT Scans this week and all show that his brain bleeds are stable.
