TUES. 07/05/11--I.C.U. DAY 8...ONE YEAR LATER...DEPARTURE FROM FREEMAN....ARRIVAL AT BARNES JEWISH HOSPTIAL

On Day 8 things happened rather quickly.  Another conversation with the Pulmonologist resulted in the mutual conclusion that Dad would have a better chance if transferred.  Barnes Jewish Hospital in St. Louis was an option, University Hospital in Columbia was a possibility.  A few others came up, but Mom and I expressed that our top priority would be for him to go where he would have the best chance.  Barnes seemed to have the best resources, and after a quick late-afternoon phone call, we were notified that Barnes wanted to accept Dad, they had a bed available., and Dad would be leaving by ambulance in one hour or less!! No time to reconsider or back out now!!!

Mom and I scrambled to get back to the truck stop room, grab a few quick items for the trip, and get back to Freeman, passing the ambulance with Dad departing as we were returning.  I made a U-turn and followed the ambulance transporting Dad, keeping it within view until the van we were driving very nearly ran out of fuel a half hour or so outside of St. Louis.

After fueling up with the speed of a pit crew, we got back on course, and managed to arrive at Barnes not long after the ambulance.  Barnes at 2am was a very strange place....the ER entrance had all manner of big city trauma and medical business going on, and after negotiating temporary parking, and getting Mom in a wheelchair up to the ICU, we were notified that Dad's bed had been filled by multiple cardiac arrest patients, and Dad had been moved to "89-ICU" on the other side of the Barnes campus.  The ambulance crew and Dad and all of the life-sustaining equipment had already arrived and been turned away from the same spot we were. Still trying to understand why a hospital was being referred to as a "campus", I wheeled Mom back downstairs and wondered what in blazes I had gotten us into.  Dad had apparently come all of this way to be sent to some sort of 'overflow' I.C.U. or something in who-knows-where in a vast hospital "campus"!!!

After getting some directions, arrival in the new location seemed even weirder...the area that I would find out later to be the prestigious Center for Advanced Medicine at that 2am hour seemed more like a vacant lunar landscape...with the only evidence of our successful arrival being the parked ambulance that we had followed from Joplin.  A lone security guard gave Mom and me some hand-written name tag stickers and what seemed like complicated directions down a windy hallway, up some elevators to the extremely arbitrary-sounding 8th floor....

Once there, we wandered unrestricted into some open doors of what seemed like an empty I.C.U. of sorts...with most of the lights off and apparently nobody there to greet us or keep us out, other than the ambulance crew that were packing up their gear.  We thanked them for getting Dad up there so quickly, and they stated that he remained mostly stable during the trip ("Mostly?!! No wonder they drove so fast!").  We then wandered down the hallway and found the room Dad was being moved into and found two nurses that politely but hastily asked us to wait outside in the waiting room back near the elevator. What kind of a place was this???!!!

Before we left Freeman, I had spoken with one of Dad's best lifelong friends and Navy flight buddies, A.B. Shuman to give an update on Dad's status....I asked for cartoon ideas, since Abey had always had a brilliant wit that cracked Dad up unceasingly,  I was sure he would be good for a cartoon or two or three to lift Dad's spirits.  One of the first things he suggested was a sort of unofficial logo that Dad and his flight crew had....the "Flying Eyeball" a popular motorcycle emblem that had become popular on American roadways after somebody invented it.  Cars, Motorcycles, and Tattoos were probably the 1960's version of going "viral" and Dad's flight crew related to it quite naturally, since they were engaged in Anti-Submarine Warfare operations and fancied themselves as an "eye in the sky" of sorts. 

The cartoon I chose for the Dad's transfer day signified a change in theme....moving to Barnes kicked up the stakes, and "upped the anty" of our efforts to get Dad off that vent...we weren't messing around...and it was time to go from drawings of Dad as different superheroes....to drawings of how Dad actually WAS a superhero!

The Flying Eyeball was the first such drawing...a symbol of Dad's flight squadron time, the bonds he made with his squadron brothers, and of one heck of a fast drive we all did on I-44 from Joplin to St. Louis to get Dad to a higher level of care....I truly believe it would have made any rebel-biker or hot-rod maniac proud...!!!!

MON. 07/04/11--FREEMAN I.C.U. DAY 7...ONE YEAR LATER

So after an incredibly strange Day 6, at 1900 hours we were in Day 7...which happened to be the Fourth of July...a day of much needed celebration and hope....for the residents of Joplin....and for Mom, Dad, and me... no additional creepy crawlers presented themselves in any of Dad's tubing in Day 7...and repeated washes down into Dad's lungs and Stomach presented no additional monsters.  "Inky and Blinky" in the canister seemed to be doing okay, crawling around doing their thing...and Dad seemed just to continue to hold his status....the repeated X-Rays showed a possible very slight improvement occurring in the fluid that had accumulated in Dad's lungs, but this was most likely wishful thinking.  We all wanted things to be improving, but the data was not supporting our wishes or prayers.

I noticed that Dad's internist, Dr. Ali, had been making rounds and staying late into the evening charting and obviously straining with all he had to figure out if there was some avenue we had overlooked, some treatment we had not yet found...but thus far it was to no avail.  Dad's Pulmonologist leveled with me....the bugs had everybody stumped, but the Infectious Control Doc flatly ruled out any possibility that those types of organisms could have originated, or even survived for any period of time inside Dad, and were at most probably unrelated.  The source of Dad's Atypical Pneumonia had not been identified, and we might want to consider treatment at another facility that had more resources that they did not possess at Freeman.  That was all I had to hear...."By all means, Doc, if you think some place can give Dad a better shot, let's go there!"  and to me we couldn't get there fast enough if Freeman felt they had reached a dead end!!!  Unfortunately, the Fourth of July was going to be a near-impossible day to call and get a transfer approved, so we would be waiting it out for another night...

Joplin and the surrounding community came together on the North side of town for a Fourth of July fireworks celebration that was perhaps the most meaningful Joplin had ever had!  Mom and I spent some time with Laremy, Phaedra, Gayle,and their girls, which served to lift our spirits a bit. We left at dusk, and I even managed to talk Mom into parking  for a bit to watch the fireworks show overhead. It wasn't long before Mom changed her mind, and simply wanted immediately to get back to Dad, which I couldn't blame her for. She simply couldn't enjoy any of the fireworks without Dad while he was back in the room at Freeman.  The Fourth of July Night Sky was on fire high above Joplin, lifting the hearts of several thousand people below, but all Mom could think about was returning to Dad's bedside.  Herself a very experienced Nurse, Dad's appearance, and the lack of improvement up to that point were painting an increasingly dark picture of Dad's outcome. She was becoming increasingly depressed, and highly distraught as she saw him there in the room. Leaving a vast array of amazing fireworks behind us as we drove South on Main Street back through the dark tornado damaged area toward Freeman seemed meaningful somehow. I felt like all of the fireworks were somehow for Dad, celebrating that he was there with us for at least another night...the occasional lone starburst rose up above the town in various places around us, and my pride in Joplin and in our nation's ability to endure amidst adversity swelled up within me.

My drawing for the day was easy to come up with....Dad as Captain America for the Fourth of July Holiday...but, of course, LCDR America was a bit more accurate, so I adjusted accordingly, and filled the background with the Stars and Stripes.

Mom and the drawings in the Freeman I.C.U.

SUN. 07/03/11--FREEMAN I.C.U. DAY 6...ONE YEAR LATER

During Day 6 things took a turn for the surreal...I had already spent quite a lot of time searching google on my phone about different types of pathogens and parasites that could possibly be causing my father's respiratory deterioration.  The possibilities seemed endless, and all frightening, but would almost be welcome if one could be identified as a step toward curing  Dad.  A lot of public attention had begun to focus on fungal infections among tornado victims.  Mucormicosis was the name that identified a deadly tissue-eating fungus found in numerous victims.  It was found to be so lethal it's only cure was surgical removal. The google searching I first did identified similar fungal infections as being cutaneous, pulmonary, cerebral, or systemic.  Up to that point, only the cutaneous version of the deadly fungus had been identified in Joplin.  To my knowledge, thus far only the cutaneous form of it has been identified in Joplin tornado victims to date, more than a year later.   Still, the inability to identify the root cause of Dad's pneumonia in that first week in the Freeman I.C.U. makes me wonder if somehow a fungal infection could have been an influence.  The guys on the fire trucks back in Columbia had google at their disposal as well, and it sounded as though they had taken for granted that Dad's respiratory illness was fungal.  To this point, I don't know if it can be completely ruled out.

But there was one thing that definitely presented as a foreign organism that I myself discovered on Day 6....and it is the weirdest thing I have ever heard of in an I.C.U. anywhere!!!! I'll explain....
When I wasn't helping Mom get around or supporting her in her daily agony seeing Dad suffering on the vent, or googling new nightmarish scenarios of what might be in Dad's lungs, or drawing, I sat there next to Dad...for hours....holding his hand....and doing a continuous cycle of staring at his face, and then starting at the monitor displaying his vital signs, and then staring at the ventilator......I did this continuously, not in any particular order....racking my brain trying to figure out the puzzle of what was keeping Dad from improving....and then I saw something that didn't seem to make sense!  I saw movement in Dad's ventilation tube!  What in the $%#* was that?!!! Something was crawling!!!! There were several small white organisms that resembled tiny maggots, both crawling in Dad's Oxygen supply tubing, and also in Dad's NG tube coming from his stomach!!!!  I called the nurse in and asked if the tubing was a closed system, and showed her what was going on, and we got rushed out, while Freeman nurses, Docs, and the Infectious Control Doc all came in!!

It didn't make sense, and for the most part, the Freeman staff seemed stumped....but though extremely freaky and seeming worthy of a Science Fiction B-movie, I was heartened that this might explain something about why Dad was not improving thus far!!!

They let us back in, after doing Pulmonoscopy and Gastric exams, which showed that nothing was crawling around inside Dad. But this was definitely a very weird twist in the story!! Leave it to Dad to find a way to be unique!!!  Tubing was replaced, and the hope and dominant theory was that something had originated somehow in the tubing itself.  In the morning the off-going nurse checked and found two more of these little organisms crawling once again out of Dad's Oxygen tubing...and was kind enough to put them in a small canister, where they crawled around actively, presumably looking for something to eat, since Dad was no longer available on the menu.

Not quite understanding what was going on, but hoping that it might lead to solving what was Dad's root cause, I drew Dad as the Silver Surfer....the most cosmic and alien of any superhero I could think of to commemorate the strangest experience we had yet up to that point.

SAT. 07/02/11--FREEMAN I.C.U. DAY 5...ONE YEAR LATER

As Day 5 was coming the 1900 hour mark, things were not improving, though Dad continued to fight on.  He seemed to be fighting the ventilator settings less, and his vitals seemed to be holding.  As Dad was so reliant upon technology that was keeping him alive, Iron Man seemed like a good subject, and I recall wanting to take more time to color in the entire page with some bright contrasting colors that he would be able to see really well, and I was wanting more than ever for him to be able to look up and see the artwork thus far...

FRI. 07/01/11--FREEMAN I.C.U. DAY 4...ONE YEAR LATER

The end of Day 4 arrived and it was becoming increasingly clear this was not going to be any sort of a quick and easy positive resolution.  Dad was not only failing to improve, but seemed to become more and more agitated unless he had plenty of medication to keep him relaxed....at a few tense moments, as Dad's heart rate and blood pressure shot up to dangerous levels, I could imagine him "hulking out" and turning into a big green monster, ripping out all of the equipment and bursting through the wall and bounding out of the hospital.  I'm sure if he could have, he would have....but drawing him as the Incredible Hulk seemed to capture what I suspect was his overall sentiment at that point...he was pissed off!!! Not happy to be there at all! And Mom and I were pissed right there with him at the absurdity of the whole situation thus far...and our frustration that nobody could identify the cause of Dad's pneumonia, and why nothing seemed to be helping.

In my search for more bright colors that would be viewable by him on the wall in his field of vision, I covered the entire paper....and did a bit more experimentation with combining colors....I already had discovered a green, but found I could get a dark blue 'purple' by combining the light blue and pink highlighters, and the pink and yellow brought an orange.  it felt like I was starting to get the hang of this highlighter art thing...