First, just a disclaimer. I make no guarantees that any of the medical information here is correct. I have had a lot of information thrown at me over the last few days and it is hard to keep track of everything. Here is the situation as I know it though.
On Tuesday morning, at about 4:00 am, my mom was taken by ambulance to the hospital in Evanston. She had been sick for a couple of weeks, with what she thought was the flu, but had gotten progressively worse. She also had a sore on her leg. When she got to Evanston, they ran a few tests and quickly life flighted her to the University of Utah Hospital.
At the University Hospital, they did a CT scan and decided to quickly get her to surgery. They diagnosed her with a necrotizing infection, in her leg, which is basically an infection which causes tissue death. The infection makes it so that blood and oxygen cannot get to the infected area, which means white blood cells can't get in to fight it off. It is very fast moving and had spread all over her leg and even into her abdomen. They told us and her, before they went into surgery, that they would have to treat it very aggressively in order to save her life, and she would quite likely lose her leg.
She was in surgery for over 4 hours. In surgery, they amputated her right leg, including her hip. They were able to get mostly above the infection, and get most of it out. She had surgery again on Thursday morning. They went back in, just to clean things out and make sure they got all of the infection. They will operate again on Monday for the same thing.
Mom is being operated on and kept in the burn unit at University Hospital. They said that the infection and amputation wound act like, and need to be treated in much the same way as, a burn, so that is the best place for her. We are very grateful for that. The burn unit at the University Hospital is one of the best in the country and her surgeon is one of the best as well, so she is in very good hands.
Mom has a long road ahead of her. Right now, she has a breathing tube and a feeding tube. She is on lots of antibiotics. They are keeping her sedated, at least until the breathing tube comes out. They were hoping to take her breathing tube out for a couple of days now, but she just isn't quite ready yet. She opens her eyes a little bit sometimes, and reacts to sounds and things like that, but mostly she is unconscious, because of the sedatives.
The latest update, as of today, is that she is mostly the same. She has a little bit of a fever, which could just be from the wound, but could also indicate another infection somewhere or some that they didn't get. They are going to take her in for a CT scan today, to check for more infection so that they know what they are looking for tomorrow during her surgery.
We really know nothing about long-term plans at this point. We have no idea how long she will be in the burn unit, or in the hospital, or anything like that. We pretty much are working towards short-term goals. Right now, the goals are to get through surgery on Monday and to get the breathing tube out. They are hoping to take the breathing tube out on Monday as well, but we'll see. They want to be cautious with that and be sure that she is ready. Once they take it out, they don't want to have to put it in again. We don't know how many more surgeries she will have, but they will keep doing them until they are confident that they have the infection taken care of.
We are very thankful for all of your thoughts and prayers. We can feel your love and support and know that mom can to.
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