Homeward Bound!

Leaving the hospital now.  KT is not too swollen, just woozy from the drugs.  We're going to bee-line it for home and get her comfortable in her own surroundings.  The exposed bone was scraped, cultures taken, but the soft tissue was NOT closed over the exposed bone.  It was left open to heal on its own so if there is any infection, it has a way out.  Thanks for your prayers.

Surgery # 25

Katie's just now going into surgery.  Late night!  Looks like they will keep her overnight for observation. Cultures will reveal whether antibiotics are targeting all the right bugs.

Next Friday Surgery

Since she has exposed bone at the back of her mouth, they will be able to do the surgery a week from tomorrow at Primary Children's under only local anesthetic, and since they’ll be going through the mouth, it should heal very quickly.  We’re encouraged by that.  This might be easier than we first thought – we’ll see.  Katie asked a boy out for Sadie Hawkin’s Dance on Oct 13^th, and he just accepted, so she’s excited to get this surgery over with and healed quickly enough to go.  I hope it works that way!  She is such a social butterfly!  Thanks for the prayers and faith - it's doing the trick!

Osteonecrosis

After two weeks of increasing pain, we took Katie for another exam.  Diagnosis:  osteonecrosis in her facial bone.  So we got word yesterday that Katie has to go in for another surgery.  The bone in her face is dying, and has to be scraped again. Pam had to get her out of school today to rush up to Primary Children’s Hospital so the surgeon can make a plan for it.  She, Katie, is devastated.  She’d been doing so well since the surgery in June, and we’d hoped we were all done.  So an extra prayer in her behalf would be great.

We have so many blessings to be thankful for that we cannot complain. But we sure do feel bad for Katie.  At least she got through a wonderful tennis season, which she loves to play so much!  Her last match was yesterday, and she won!  So she has fond memories of a “normal” summer.

EFY

KT is at "Especially For Youth" (EFY) this week in Cedar City, and has been having a great time. Last night, her PICC line closed up on her, though, so this morning, Pam rushed up to take her to the ER where, thankfully, the medical staff was able to get it cleared so it didn't have to be removed. She is also having some shoulder pain with it, so they're doing an ultrasound to see why it's affecting her that way.  The good news is that she keeps her PICC, and gets to finish her week out at EFY. 

The reason keeping her PICC is so important is so they can do all the blood draws, CT/MRI contrasts, and IVs over the next year without having to poke her hundreds of times.  She is what they call a "hard stick," in that her veins have rebelled over the years and do not like being stuck, so they recede deep into her and are so tiny anyway.  Few technicians can get an IV started on her anymore. 

She's happy, growing in strength, and looking forward to starting the tennis season on Monday.  Thanks for your love and support!

Back to Cipro

We spent Sunday morning in the ER, where they did blood tests and a chest x-ray.  Turns out KT's white blood cell count is quite low (1.4?), so they immediately took her off the cefapime and changed her back to Cipro.  She was on that before.  They also put her on 6 days of steroids. She says her throat still feels constricted, but she's doing okay and wants to keep doing the fun stuff, so we went to Space Center Houston yesterday and had a great time.  We’ll follow-up with infectious disease doctor in Provo next week when we get home from Texas. Thanks for your prayers!

Allergic Reaction?

In ER in Houston with KT. She's had some sort of allergic reaction to the iv antibiotic.  She's coming around ok, but scared us for a minute there.

Master Healer

This is how we know the surgeries have gone to help Katie.  She's doing quite well, having been able to make girls camp and youth conference.  We are now in Houston to celebrate the baptism of one of her nieces.  Thanks for all the prayers!

Tailbone

P.S.  We just found out a few minutes ago that Katie's TAILBONE is broken, and is so bad that she'll have to have it removed!  Say what????  It's from an injury 10 years ago!

Yeast

My wife and I would like to thank  you for fasting and praying for Katie 10 days ago before her surgery.  Our entire Stake did a fast the day before, which wasn’t something we expected or asked for, but it made a big difference.  We felt you should know the results.

Katie is recovering very well.  We were surprised at a couple of things:

-        The surgeon did not find as much infected bone as was suspected; in fact, there was very little, but enough to harbor infection; that little bit was removed without having any significant impact on losing bone mass that was previously gained

-        In the cultures taken during surgery, MRSA did not show up, meaning the antibiotic is killing that particular bug.  However, pseudomonas did show up, which can be equally as difficult to deal with.  A change of antibiotics was prescribed to target the new bug.  We also just received notice yesterday that she has yeast growing in there too, so they’ll add another medication today for that.

-        The swelling was not as bad or as long-lived as we’d expected.

-        Her energy levels are slowly increasing day by day.

-        She’s in great spirits!

So, our deep, heart-felt thanks for your efforts in Katie’s behalf.  As I keep telling her, she’s a complicated woman!  But thanks to the many prayers offered in her behalf, she’s getting through this and plans to go to youth conference and girls camp this month.

-        Glenn, Pam & Katie