Nate’s oncology team has been monitoring a couple small spots in his lungs for a few years. They gradually got larger, but nothing that was alarming. His doctor decided to put him on a 3 month round of chemo starting at the end of November to see if the spots would shrink.
The first round went basically as expected. His second infusion left him feeling very sick for much longer than usual.
Early on Tuesday, December 19th Nate was taken to the emergency room with a dangerously high heart rate caught by his Apple Watch, an unsteady woozy feeling, and seeing spots. The team immediately took him back because his blood pressure was incredibly low.
It was determined he had a severe bowel obstruction which had spilled into his abdominal cavity causing an infection and he was taken for emergency surgery.
Surgery went well, however because of chemo he had almost no white cell count to help combat the sepsis infection on top of healing from the surgery and was taken to an isolation room in the ICU.
He was doing well most of the week. Still requiring some assistance for his blood pressure and being pumped full of fluids and antibiotics but was awake and interacting with people.
Overnight/early morning Christmas Eve his breathing became more difficult and his blood pressure health was beginning to decline. It was determined that it would be best to sedate and intubate so they could do the things they needed to get his blood pressure and breathing back to close to normal levels.
Over the day he quickly declined and was taken to surgery again to make sure there wasn’t an issue in his bowels. They were able to rule that out and determined he likely had gotten pneumonia on top of everything else.
He’s been in critical condition since then.
Overnight he did not decline further, which is encouraging.
I’ll be posting updates here as they come. Thank you everyone for your kind words and offers of help during this time. It’s really been helpful. We’ve got such a good support system around us.
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