March 5
So, Tom (
https://www.facebook.com/tom.wade.942) Wade's medical condition has gotten worse. After some increased pain and swelling, he got a fever and was readmitted into Mercy Thursday night. After talking to several doctors at Mercy, it was advised to transfer his care to the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota. The type of procedure they think he needs, the Mercy staff isn't comfortable performing, and they said the Mayo clinic is the expert on this and they would possibly be able to offer other options. While his condition isn't life threatening, he hasn't been comfortable in over 3 weeks. And when I say comfortable, I mean laying down on pain meds and even then he's still been in quite a bit of pain. We need to figure this out. This is not a way to live. He can't live like this long term.
So, we are at Lambert awaiting our flight. We meet with the Mayo group tomorrow at 7:30 am and then we'll proceed from there. They will review all the tests done at Mercy, conduct their own consultation anf possible more tests, and then we will figure out the plan. It could mean surgery that afternoon. It could mean meeting with another group of docs a few days later. Who knows. All we know right now is Monday at 7:30 to start the process. Mayo advised staying 4 days, so we are booked through Friday knowing that we might be flying home on Tuesday, or be there through next week too.
Thanks for all the meals, prayers, thoughts, and support so far. We have an amazing #FixtheIrishman (
https://www.facebook.com/hashtag/fixtheirishman?source=feed_text&story_id=10212438488826988) army taking care of our babies and running them all over the place so their life remains as normal as possible. The boys know they are having 6 slumber parties in a row with some friends and family while mommy helps daddy with some doctors out of town. So, they are happy and content which makes leaving easier so we can focus on Tom. Thank you!!!
I picked up Tom from Mercy this morning, and we are now awaiting our flight. So, that's all we know right now. Hoping for an on time flight and safe drive to Rochester to get Tom comfortable. He's miserable waiting right now.
Ill try to send an update tomorrow after we have seen the consultation team.
Thanks for everything.We are grateful for our village!!!
March 6
Irishman Update:
Hi everyone. After a very rough night, it's been a long day of appointments and tests. Well, the Irishman continues to be a medical mystery. They are in amazement that he's never had issues until now. They are still trying to get to the bottom of why this all happened and have run every test under the sun, including genetic testing and others. A lot of scary words said/heard today. The bottom line is he has some crazy vein mapping going on, and while it's worked for him for 42 years things are not working that way any more. He has 2 issues- acute (new) and chronic (old) clots. After consulting with different teams/types of docs, the medical team agrees that the new stuff needs to be figured out and cleared first and then go from there. He has more clots than he did 2 1/2 weeks ago. So they are going in tomorrow and performing thromboletic therapy to hopefully clear all the new stuff. They also plan to explore these long term clots and figure out what to do with those. There's talk of vein bypass surgery. We're back there tomorrow at 7:30 am ans go from there.
This place is wonderful. We've had more explained to us the past 12 hours than in weeks of medical visits. They are on time with appointments and you flow through visits and tests with military precision. It's a Disney fast pass for sick people. Grateful to be here. And fyi, to add to the excitement, there's a tornado warning where we are for the next 2 hours. Go figure.
