Out of the ordinary injury to a family member

I have a cousin (T) in the hospital in grave condition. He is in his early 40s, healthy as can be, married with two young children. T lives several hours away from me.

Late last week, T was helping coach his son's peewee football team and was holding a blocking pad for the young players to hit. One of the boys missed and hit the crown of his helmet on the front of T's thigh, resulting a good-sized bruise. Later that weekend, T and his son were involved in some usual father/son horseplay and his son accidentally elbowed the same spot again rather hard.

T went to the doctor Monday and he offered T an expected, conservative approach to treatment - ice, NSAIDs, etc - and sent him home.

Wednesday, T spent a large portion of the day in a car, traveling about his territory seeing customers. He did a lot of driving compared to walking about.

Thursday morning, T woke with his thigh the size of a basketball, extroidinarily sore and he was unable to walk. He ended up having surgery that day as soon as they could get him in, where they removed about 1/4th of his quadraceps muscle in that leg and they opened his leg up from his hip to his ankle and have packed it open. They change the dressing every 3 hours and he has been back to surgery again to do some more debidement.

He apparently developed compartment syndrome from the bruising injuries and car travel, which resulted in the death of part of muscle in his leg. Right now he is ventilator dependent for breathing and he is in renal failure since the compartment syndrome progressed rapidly into necrotizing fasciitis.

Normally the necrotizing fasciitis is the result of an infection by a pathogen (usually Staph Aureus), but his is aseptic-the cultures show no bacteria growing, which is good. It is far less likely to spread to vital organs, which would very likely kill him. There was initial concern that they may have to amputate his leg, but with the good culture report, that seems less likely now.

He's a tough guy, as far as strength of character goes and is fighting this tooth and nail. He is alert and communicative (even with the tube in his throat) and understands what he is facing. Fortunately, he probably will not remember much of his confinement. The decision to amputate his leg will most likely fall to his sweet wife, a decision I hope never to have to make for my spouse, although that is looking less and less like something they will have to do.

He and I have been close over the years and it goes without saying, he has occupied my thoughts over the past few day. For those of you of the religous nature, prayers of intercession & petition will be greatly appreciated.

 

Sorry to hear about this Jeff. Best wishes to him.

 

Ventilators suck. (Not a joke, just a bad memory.)

 

He has improved over the night, but he still in very critical condition.

 

"T" is still in the hospital, still in intensive care, albeit a lesser "intensive" unit than he was in, sorta a step down intensive care.

He is healing and they took him off the vent about 10 days ago. However, his kidneys are not functioning as they should and he has a huge, deep would the length of his leg to heal. Evey couple of days, he is carried to surgery to close it more and do skin grafts.

He still has a long row to hoe.

Many thanks for all of your concerns, thoughts and prayers.