The Jay man!

On Thursday morning Jay wasn’t feeling very well, having headaches the past couple of days on and off, and now having nausea & stomach pain. I was sick on Monday, and we just thought he had caught my bug. He goes to work anyways, and then calls me around 11 to come pick him up (he drives the medical van to locations, so he doesn’t have his car at work, just the Medical Van). He came home and spent the rest of the evening throwing up, feverish, horrible stomach pain & slept as much as he could. He woke up at about 3am and spent the next two hours back and forth between our bed and the bathroom floor. Finally just after 5am I told him we were going to the hospital. I called my dad and he immediately came over to be with the kids. FYI: It took me about 30 minutes to get Jay off of the bathroom floor and to the car. When my dad saw him trying to come down the stairs he says in all seriousness: “should we call an ambulance?” That’s just to give you an idea of what he looked like. We headed over to the hospital which is almost 25 minutes away.

Jay was diagnosed with Crohn's disease about 5 months after we were married, back in 06. He is very fortunate, never having horrible flare-ups and it is well controlled. But at this point we just assumed he was his first Crohn's attack.

We showed up at 6:15am and he was put in a bed immediately. They gave him pain meds and nausea meds and then wanted to do a CT scan. So at first they were treating him like a Crohn's patient. Our ER doctor obviously didn’t know too much about Crohn's disease and things took forever that first day. He was miserable, totally non coherent half the time due to the nausea, throwing up, extreme stomach pain, fever & ferocious chills lasting about 45 minutes. It was insane! That first doctor was going to discharge him with just a prescription for a medication (a steroid) for his flare-up. But at that point he couldn’t even get out of bed, so I did NOT like that plan. I asked if we could start the steroid right away, so it could actually start working, because the pain & nausea meds at this point weren’t helping. A few hours later they decide to admit him due to one of the four blood cultures they did earlier that day, grew bacteria. He was admitted. We get upstairs, he got his first dose of the steroids and slowly that night he feels better and better.

Saturday: Jay is feeling fine and wants to go home. He waited till 3pm to even see a doctor. It’s his GI doctor (The one he sees for his Crohn's) and she tells him that she does not believe he had a Crohn's flare-up, and that flare-ups don’t come on that quickly & they don’t go away that quickly. He then finds out that now, all four blood cultures (they took on Friday) grew bacteria, and he has an infection running through his bloodstream, so he needs to stay there to continue the IV antibiotics. (We find out later that it is E coli bacteremia, which is way different than the E coli you get from eating bad meat.)

Sunday: A doctor sees him around 11am and there’s talk about his gall bladder/gallstones and that they think he passed a stone on Friday. Nausea, horrible pain, vomiting, fever, chills are all symptoms of gallstones. And then once the stone passes, you feel better. (You pass gallstones through your poop… just to clarify. I didn’t know the difference of kidney & gallstones) They schedule an ultrasound for that day at 4pm. Jay had already been on a liquid diet since he was admitted and then once they decided on the ultrasound, they told him he couldn’t eat anything till after that. HE WAS STARVING! Poor guy. He gets the ultrasound, the tech says, “well, looks like we found the problem” but legally can’t say more than that. We ask the nurse about the results of the ultrasound and food. The nurse then tells us that the doctor went home and that we’ll get the results Sunday. What? But that he could eat cause there are no stones in his gall bladder. Jay ordered a burger and wolfed it down! He says that the burger really wasn't that great, but at that very moment, it was like the tastiest meal he had ever had! He was so hungry that it tasted like heaven. But he was stuck another night in the hospital.

Jay calls his coworker Dr. Anna (who is the doctor on the medical van he manages) and gives her an update. Once she finds out that he has an infection in his bloodstream she tells us that this can be dangerous and that he does need to stay there to be monitored and be on IV antibiotic. After that phone call, we feel a little better about being there.

Just for the record, Jay is just pulling faces. He felt fine at this point.

Monday: The doctor sees Jay around 9am! YAY! He says that “walls” of his gall bladder are showing infection but that there are no stones or pockets (where the stones could have been). But the inflammation of the walls is a sign of gallstones. Because they could not be 100% about gal stones, and because he didn’t actually see any, they didn’t want to take out his gall bladder. They said he could go home and he will continue the antibiotics for his infection they found running through his bloodstream.

Monday 10:30am: CHECKED OUT! Wahoo!

Wednesday: Jay’s GI (Crohn’s) Doctor wants to see him next Monday. And also wanted to do a HIDA Scan, which will create pictures of his liver, gallbladder, bile ducts and small intestines. So he did that this morning. The Doctor also tells him that the first bacteria that they found was E. coli, and that they found a second bacteria in those blood cultures they did last Friday, called Clostridium Difficile (C Diff), they prescribe him another antibiotic.

So to sum things up... because Jay has Crohn's disease, it just makes everything just a little bit more complicated! And there you have it! AND that was the short version! ;)

We sure appreciate so many of you! Thank you to my sweet parents who took Gwen & Oscar in a heartbeat, my siblings & sister-in-law who also took them in and took care of them. To our dobles & friends who came late that first night and gave Jay a blessing. Thanks to all of you who stopped by, brought dinner and treats! Thank you to our good friends who offered their help and support in so many ways, and for the thoughts & prayers. We are incredibly lucky to have such awesome support. Seriously, incredible!

Thank you. We love you. Xoxo