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Dennis’s Story

Site created on April 19, 2020

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.

On Friday, April 17th, our dad was cleaning the outside of his house. While up on a ladder he looked straight up and felt a pop. He immediately was in pain in his head and neck. Dad was able to get himself down from the ladder and into the house, but the pain was excruciating and he was nauseous. Mom drove him into the Onamia ER where they did a cat scan. They identified that he had bleeding on the brain and flew him down to North Memorial Hospital in Robbinsdale, MN.

Saturday the Neurosurgeon had a cerebral angiogram done dad was still in pain and nauseous but had to wait until today (Sunday) to get the final results of the test. Thankfully, they don’t see any evidence of an aneurysm and no stroke and the bleeding looks to have stopped.

They believe he had a subarachnoid hemorrhage. Unfortunately, today he began to have some labored breathing. He’s had an echocardiogram done and we know his heart is good and an x-ray on the chest that showed he’s developed some fluid around the lungs. His kidneys have also begun to have issues.

The fluid on the lungs is believed to be from all the extra fluids they’ve been pumping into dad since Friday. The kidney issues are believed to be due to the dye used in the tests since it’s been used twice in 24 hours along with his chronic difficult high blood pressure and BP medications. They have put him on a diuretic to try to help with the fluid around the lungs and have brought in a kidney specialist to help with his kidneys. I guess since kidneys are often affected by Blood Pressure medications the kidney doctors are helpful in finding a medication that can control the blood pressure better and be gentler on his kidneys.

We have been told they will call us once a day with updates unless there is a major change. So at this point, less is better. We have been told he will be in the hospital for a minimum of 1 -2 weeks. He will continue to be in ICU until his blood pressure is under control and then move to a regular floor for the remainder of his time in the hospital. At this time, he still nauseous and unable to keep anything down. He still has head and neck pain, but this morning he did say his head did not hurt as bad as the prior two days so we are happy for that improvement.

Newest Update

Journal entry by Tammy Stenzel — May 30, 2020

Thank you to all the family and friends who were able to come to the funeral yesterday and thank you to all those that couldn't make it, but shared your condenses and support with the family. Dad sure was loved.

Since, we couldn't have a viewing the night before. We are hoping if things open up late this summer we can have a celebration of Dad's life around his birthday. If we are able to do this we will share the information on this page and other medias as well so all his friends and family are aware.

Tammy, Tonya, Chris and Mom

Read More of the journal titled "May 30, 2020"

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