Gratitude

Nate is back up on the transplant floor and had a good weekend. But before we get much further into that, we have something very important to say:



THANK YOU!

At the bottom of our last blog post, we posted a link to the GoFundMe our friends finally convinced us to create to help fund Nate’s “Extra Innings.” Since then, we have been utterly overwhelmed by your kindness and humbled by your generosity. We checked back in on the fundraiser Saturday, and it brought tears to our eyes. Not only did you help us meet our goal in a matter of hours, but you doubled it within two days and it’s still growing.

When we started this journey (and this blog), we never expected to face the mountain of complications that we have. It’s certainly not the path we would have chosen, but we could not have made it nearly as far without all of the love and support we’ve received from so many of you even before our fundraiser. (Thank you to those who have sent checks, gift cards, movie tickets, and care packages! We couldn’t always thank you individually, but know your generosity is appreciated!)

We continue to hope that Nate’s prognosis somehow is longer than we’ve been told to expect. But if that’s not the case, we truly can’t explain just how grateful we are for your help in making his time left something special.

Nate, our friend Mike, and Ann before Mike left for the airport. So glad he could visit!

On Friday afternoon, Nate made it out of bed for the first time since last Monday. He described it as being “less bad” than he thought it’d be, but still bad. Everyone was relieved to see him able to put a little weight on his left leg (where they operated) and move around. That evening, we left the ICU and made our way up to the transplant floor!

It was a long week for everyone. Nate’s sister, Carrie, squeezed in a quick nap in the ICU.

Over the weekend, his team was watching a few things: a low-grade fever that’s come and gone, a rash on his left flank and back, some tachycardia (increased heart rate), and his labs. Thankfully, none of these issues have been particularly dramatic. The fever didn’t last, the rash hasn’t worsened, and the increased heart rate seems mostly related to pain. His liver labs have still been pretty inconclusive. (For the more medically inclined: His liver enzymes have been coming steadily down since the trauma of last week, but his bilirubin is slightly elevated.)

World’s colliding. Nate’s best friend from medical school, Mike, meeting Nate’s best friend from residency, Laura. (Plus, a nurse’s hand holding pressure after removing Nate’s central line.)

Nate’s biggest complaint is still pain. As his femoral artery bled last Monday night, all that blood rushed up the back of his abdomen, pushing aside his bowels, moving his left kidney way out of position, and rushing all the way up to his spleen. His psoas muscle, the “tenderloin” muscle, seems to have gotten the worst of it. One surgeon described it as the whole muscle having road rash. They stopped the ketamine drip on Saturday afternoon, and that’s not been easy. Especially with movement, the pain is severe.

Thankfully, we had great help keeping Nate distracted from the discomfort. One of our best friends and best man in our wedding was here for the weekend. (For close followers of the blog, it was for Mike’s wedding that Nate had to make a long-distance best man toast when his artery clotted in April.) Mike and Nate got to spend the weekend reminiscing, catching up, and telling stories. It was so great to have him here.

We made it outside to enjoy a few hours of the beautiful weather on Saturday.

Mike is an anesthesia resident in California. He couldn’t truly take a vacation this weekend though because he was called into duty to help keep Nate’s multiple IV lines in order.

Tuesday will mark a week since Nate’s last scan, so they’ll do a CT angiogram to evaluate where things stand now: Are there remaining pockets of blood or other fluid that need to be drained? Are there bilomas forming in the liver? What does blood flow to the liver look like now?

In the meantime, all the various teams will continue their monitoring. Infectious disease managing antibiotics, vascular surgery managing his most recent wound, hematology weighing in on his blood thinner medications, palliative care facilitating communication and managing pain, and transplant surgery overseeing it all.

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Again, we are so thankful for the wonderful friends, family, acquaintances, and strangers whose kind donations to our fundraiser over the weekend simply blew us away.

Nate walking with his nurse, Erika, up on the transplant floor.