Dad's hospitalization, update #3

Hello One and All,

I paid a visit to Grandpa at Providence Hospital today. He is doing well, in spite of the evidence to the contrary. Up until this past Friday he had been recuperating at home from the last hospitalization at Elmendorf hospital. He had been receiving home treatment by the visiting nurse who, once again, became concerned with the condition of his eye and his overall health. He was admitted to Providence because the urgency and the fact that his doctors at Elmendorf would not be available until Monday. Here is the latest installment of gruesome photos. Double-click on them for excruciating detail.

It may not be obvious, but even though his eye looks gross it is actually healing relatively well; especially considering the class of bug that got to him. And in that matter I have a little more information for you all.

The doctor in charge of him at Providence specializes in treating infectious diseases. He said that he had been infected with two bugs: serratia, and Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus Aureus (MRSA), otherwise known as staph infection. The first is actually a secondary infection that sometimes happens to patients treated in hospitals. The second is the more serious of the two, and it what he is receiving antibiotics for. It is the bacteria that his foot was being treated for and that may be the source of the infection in his eye. Here is a link to more information about MRSA Infection at the Mayo Clinic's website. It is treatable, but is highly resistant to all but the most effective of antibiotics. The danger is, as I mentioned in my earlier posting, that his diabetic condition makes it very risky to treat him with such a potent drug and his blood sugar level must be carefully watched. He is getting tired of being poked for blood.

The doctor also suspects a more subtle underlying condition for his frequent infection is that his bone marrow is not working properly to manufacture white blood cells. He said this may have been the case as far back as two years ago though they have they have not yet made any conclusion about it. It would, however, explain why he has been so susceptible to infections and so knocked for a loop when they occur.

Here are a couple shots of his foot and legs. This infection is definitely healing and is a very positive sign of recovery.

Please be reassured though that Dad seems to be doing well and is recovering, albeit slowly. Personally I would feel much better about having him receiving treatment at home than being in the hospital with so much other bacteria floating around. Even under the best of circumstances at home his antibiotic regimen will need to continue perhaps as long as six months. It is one persistent bug.

In other news, my daughter went to the prom with her boyfriend Brian. Here is a picture of the two of them:

She is, needless to say, growing more beautiful every day. I am proud of her but am far from ready to let her go.

And finally, for those of you who want more information on how to post pictures, I would be glad to help you out with specific tips by phone. Many modern digital cameras have the capability of taking huge poster-size pictures, which aren't easily viewable in a browser on a monitor. In general you can prepare your photos ahead of time by setting your camera's pixel size to "VGA", or no more than 1 m in size. If you double-click on Dad's photos above you will see the VGA size displayed on your computer screen. The photo of Brian and Megan is saved in a size of 1280 x 720 pixels.

When you are ready to upload the photo it will load into your post at the top of the edit window. Scroll up, cut it to the clipboard, then scroll down to where you want paste it. Right click and paste. It may seem tricky at first but practice it a little and you will get the hang of it. Call me if you want more detail than that.

I am glad to see the posts of the kids. Keep em coming!

Love,
Jed