Updates on Keith

Keith continues to be in the hospital over in Safety Harbor (Clearwater area). I drove over on Wednesday afternoon to find him in pretty good spirits. That morning, he had been taken back to the CT scanner for a guided placement of a drain through his abdomen into his colon. Most of the day yesterday I still wasn't sure what exactly was going on with him.

This morning, I was at the hospital by 6am since his doctor rounded at 6:30am yesterday. Keith was wide awake and watching Star Trek. He said he had a pretty good night. His nurses have all been wonderful. Around 9:30am a nurse practitioner from radiology came in to see us. She was there when the drain was placed yesterday. She finally explained things to me as best as she could. My limited understanding is that there is a bowel infection that if left untreated could have sent Keith into septic shock. The infection is a result of an abcess of some sort.

A few minutes later, the surgeon came in to see Keith. The surgeon is a really energetic, yet surprisingly genuine guy. He explained that the best case scenerio is that the antibiotics work right away and Keith gets to feeling better quickly. The worst case scenerio is that the antibiotics and drain do not work, resulting in Keith having the infected part of his colon removed. I asked him out of those two situations, which one are we realistically looking at. It looks like for now we are somewhere in the middle, waiting on the sensitivities of the cultures to come back - that confirms if the right antibiotic is being used (he's on a pretty broad spectrum IV antibiotic now) or if the bug causing all this trouble is more sensitive to another antibiotic. Those results should come out on Saturday.

Keith had a good day today. He was up out of bed a few times. However, he did run a couple of fevers. As soon as his temperature goes up, he starts to get a little confused. Funny how the morhine puts him right to sleep, but the fevers make him confused.

He goes for another CT scan sometime tomorrow. I'm currently in Clearwater with him. However, I'll head back to Altamonte Springs tomorrow evening if it seems like he is doing okay. We are hoping that after the CT is done we'll know a bit more about what the plan of action is.

I asked the surgeon (since he seems to be the main guy in charge), what the probability is of Keith being up on his feet and back in Orlando by Wednesday since Keith has to sign for our house closing on that day. The surgeon told me not to count on it. It looks as though Keith will be signing for the house from his hospital bed over in Clearwater.

The command has been amazing. The kindness and generosity we've been shown has been amazing. We've had a visit from the Chaplain and also from the Captain and a half a dozen people in between. I've got a pocket full of business cards with many hand written cell phone numbers requesting updates and offering everything from helping to find child care to advanemnents in pay if needed. I have to admit right now we could just use some extra sleep and some extra prayers.