Kathy Ziegler (Plymouth, WI) is a STRONG, yet humble woman. She wanted us to create this site to centralize communications about her current health condition. Angi and Laura will maintain communications, so please come to this site first for the latest updates.
Kathy does NOT want any donations of money, food, or gifts at this time. If you would like to help, Angi and Laura will reach out to those more local to Plymouth for services from you (ex: mowing her yard, watering her plants/gardens, taking care of her cat, etc).
Onto the details...
On Sat, July 15, Kathy got up from the couch in her living room to go to up bed. A sharp pain immediately shot into her left shoulder and took her breath away! It didn't go away, but she didn't think anything of it at the time. (She claims she's "old" and who knows what one can do at any given point in time, even just by twisting the wrong way!)
By Sunday, the pain had traveled down the left side of her back, but it was still bearable. She went with the Seifert family on an outing to Old World Wisconsin all day Sunday, but the pain continued to get worse. By Sunday night, the pain was in her right and left shoulders/neck area and down both sides of her back. She called Angi, and they went to the ER in Sheboygan. At the ER, they assumed it was a pulled muscle or muscle spasm. They sent her home with muscle relaxers and pain meds.
Kathy did the best she could on the medication she had from the ER, but the pain worsened on Monday. She couldn't sleep, and any sharp movements caused excruciating pains radiating down her back and shoulders. The muscle relaxers only made her super weak and were awful! She setup an appointment with a nurse practitioner that Angi has seen multiple times, but the earliest she could be seen was Wednesday.
She called Angi again on Tuesday, and they went into Urgent Care during the day. They did an X-ray of her spine, but nothing abnormal showed up on that. They gave her anti-inflammatory steroids and sent her back home, still assuming "muscle spasms" as the diagnosis. Knowing she had an appointment already with a NP the next day, Kathy did the best she could to work with the drugs she had. She continued to have terrible sleep, and by this time was losing her appetite.
The Wednesday NP appointment proved no different. The NP wanted her to give the anti-inflammatory steroids a chance to build up in her system and work. So, she went back home again.
By this time, Angi and Laura knew this wasn't a muscle-related injury. On Thursday, Kathy started experiencing tingling sensations down her arms and in her hands, and her legs started to go numb! So, Angi brought her back to the same ER in Sheboygan. We were not going to let her go back home again on her own and asked for various blood tests and an MRI of her whole spine. The MRI (non-contrast) showed an "abnormality" in her upper spine, between her shoulder blades, at the lower thoracic/upper cervical intersection in her spine. Her blood tests also showed high white blood cell counts, so we knew her body was fighting something big. So, she was transported via ambulance to St. Vincent's hospital in Green Bay. By this time the numbness had moved up into Kathy's abdomen and then to her chest! Whatever was happening, was happening fast. There was an abscess in her spine. It was putting pressure on her spinal cord and nerves, causing all of this pain and numbness! She needed to have that drained ASAP. So, they called a neurosurgeon in from Appleton to do an emergency surgery to drain the abscess Thursday night. The procedure went as expected, and the surgeon put a drain in the abscess to keep the fluid from building back up again. Some of the fluid from the abscess was then cultured to determine what kind of bacterial infection she really has.
Kathy is currently in the IMCU at St. Vincent hospital up in Green Bay and will be there until we know what bacterial infection caused this abscess and what antibiotics are needed to treat it. The current course of treatment is for her to receive IV antibiotics in the hospital for 2-6 weeks. During that time, she will require OT and PT to ensure she continues moving her body so that her muscles don't atrophy from laying in a hospital bed for that long of a period. The length of time she will spend on the IV antibiotics depends on how her body heals and handles them.
We have been informed that this is a very serious situation, that it will take a long time to recover, and that she was very lucky they caught it when they did.
We are currently on a holding pattern until the cultures results come back and the medical team can put a plan together. We hope this will occur on Monday (7/24). Further updates will be included in journal entries on this site.
We appreciate your support, words of hope and encouragement, and above all PRAYERS for her healing from our Lord above. Thank you for visiting.
The move didn’t take long. She was back at 113 Selma St in Plymouth by early afternoon. And just look at that SMILE on her face!!
I realize this post is a few days late, so on Tues 4 days post-being home, updates are…she is still OVERJOYED to be home!! 😆. She has been so happy to be home and on her OWN schedule. Her kitty is soooo happy she is back. She has plenty of paperwork to work through and file. OT will be coming to her house a few times this week as well. And her Meals on Wheels food delivery was right on-time Monday morning!
All-in-all…it’s been a smooth transition home thus far.
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