Tom Hinkley

Early in the morning at 3:30 a.m. on January 25th, 2015 Tom woke up with excruciating pain in his right thigh, thinking it was his right hamstring, he was screaming, not knowing what was going on.  I called 911 because he didn't want me touching his leg and a heat pack wasn't going to work.  The paramedics arrived, and they gave him pain Meds via IV, and tried to massage the muscle, upon reducing it, they noticed it still wasn't straight, they noted that he could've snapped his femur.  He bought himself a ride to the ER via ambulance.  IN then ER they confirmed his fracture and noted that it was abnormal for the largest bone to break with no accident, and in bed like this.  His bone was weak was also noted.   He had surgery to fix his fracture, he ended up with a rod the length of his femur and 4 pins, they also biopsied his bone, due to the nature of the break and condition of the bone, he had trouble being extubated in the recovery room, possibly due to the sedation and pain Meds, so had to be reintubated.  He ended up in ICU, they did a chest CT, it was negative for a PE, but showed some aspiration pneumonia.  He remained intubated overnight.  Monday morning he was extubated and had a pretty uneventful day.  He just started eating and was confused from pain Meds and sedation started to come around.  We found out later that day that they found some suspicious findings on the chest CT on the kidney incidentally and wanted to do an abdominal CT, so that was also scheduled for Tuesday morning.   He started running a fever also.   Tuesday morning the CT was done, his memory was coming back, pain was getting better, and we moved to a new room out of ICU.  The days were a Whirlwind and we had more questions than answers, but we were bound and determined to get them.   We had tons of support and prayers being said for us.   We found out on January 28th that he most likely had Renal Cell Carcinoma that had spread to the bone, which would later be confirmed by the pathology report.