Wednesday, March 18, 20015 Jackson Memorial Hospital

Arrived Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami via Lear Jet with flight physician, flight nurse, and paramedic on Wednesday March 11th about 9:00 p.m. Admitted to the medical ICU.  Thursday attending physician showed me his chest x-Ray which was almost entirely white with pneumonia.  He also showed me the MRI from Nassau which showed brain bleeds in all 4 quadrants of his brain.  On Friday, March 13th, his chest x-Ray was greatly improved, and the doctors were amazed by that.  However, now the sepsis was attacking his kidneys, and he was put on dialysis on Saturday. He has been in atrial fibrillation before and since our arrival.  They did cardiovert (shock the heart) to get him back into a normal rhythm, but that was short lived.  Meanwhile, he is now having issues with his clotting factors, and bleeding around the dialysis and other catheters, so they had to give him 2 units of blood.  They also gave him 6 units of fresh frozen plasma.  He definitely is septic with a staph aureus infection.  On Monday his liver enzymes were greatly elevated, so we are now getting into multiple organ failure.  On Monday they did a CT scan of his chest, abdomen, and pelvis.  It showed infarcts (dead tissue caused by obstruction of the blood vessel), in his kidney and spleen, most likely caused by the heart pushing blood clots or debris. The Infectious Disease doctors were consulted and they are starting to think infective endocarditis (infection of the valves and/or lining of the heart).  Tuesday they did a TEE, trans esophageal echocardiogram, in which they put a large tube down the esophagus with a camera to look at the heart and valves.  Today, Wednesday, March 18th, still awaiting complete report, but am told he has a growth in his ventricle of his heart, which may be the vegetative growth of the bacteria.  Right now he is "stable, but critical", and the hospital team has not sugar coated anything.  I ask only for your prayers for Rich.  If you are wondering about CJ, Bitts, and Rikava, God has taken care of all of them.  So happens that on Saturday, March 7th, 2 of Rich's friends were driving to Miami to pick up Dave's new boat.  Rick, a good friend from the marina grabbed his passport and came with them.  Dave had a friend in Miami with a float plane who flew Rick to Staniel Cay, where Rick met up with our old friends on Trumpeter who were taking care of CJ, Bitts, and the boat.  Rick got the boat to Miami and I got to see the dogs.  My best friend Jan flew down from Ft Walton Beach, then rented a car to bring the dogs back with her and dog sit while I attend to things here.  Rikava is buddy boating with Dave, and they left Miami today.  I will probably do a weekly synopsis of what is going on to keep you informed.  Thank you for reading our blog, CJ enjoyed writing it.  What was at one time a short while ago "Livin the dream, is now Livin the nightmare"!