How We Got Here

Last Tuesday, October 16th, our father "Shug" got up like every weekday morning at 5:30a.m. and headed into work at Wholesale Tire Company. According to his co-workers, he began feeling a tingling on his left side and just wasn't feeling right. He told Wayne to go on out and get started and if he felt worse he would call him. Shortly after, he radioed for help. An ambulance was called and he was transported to City Hospital in Martinsburg. The ER team who cared for him did an AMAZING job - their proactive and accurate care helped stabilize him in a very critical period. Shug has AFib (Atrial Fibrilation - a condition of the heart which causes irregular, rapid beating of the atrial chambers). This condition required him last Spring to go on a blood thinning medicine called "Coumadin". When the stroke occurred - due to his high blood pressure and blood thinner medicine - the doctors initially were concerned about being able to reverse the effects of the coumadin as they observed a very significant hemorrhage on the right side of his brain. City Hospital stabilized him, and sent him by ambulance to Winchester Medical Center where a team of stroke specialists and a nuero surgeon awaited. He spent most of the day in the ER stabilizing him. By Tuesday evening he was transported to the ICU in Winchester where he remains today.

Where We Are Today. . . Day Seven
Throughout the past 6 days, Shug has remained in the ICU as the medical team still tries to stabilize his blood pressure. He can not leave the ICU until they can take him off the drip meds for his blood pressure. They have tried for 2 days to ween him off the medicine but with no luck. He was fighting a bit of pnuemonia - and yesterday had a fever of 101+, but today thank goodness his temp is normal. We were a bit afraid Sunday afternoon as he went into a bit of a "stare" and was not responding to the nuero tests and began to talk with only a whisper. However, an emergency CT scan confirmed there was no more bleeding occuring in the brain and that if anything, the hemorrhage was a bit smaller. As of today, Shug has full range of motion on his right side, however, he still has no movement on the left.

As all of you who know him can imagine, he is really "fighting" being in that bed and unable to get out. He keeps telling us he wants to go home (of course he does!). He does talk to us when we ask him questions and on good days he may even ask you a question. He is still a bit confused at times - and talks about his job and what he should be doing there.

His loyal wife Jeannie - of almost 50 years - has never left his side (except at night when they kick us out at 9pm). She comes up to the hospital everyday from 10:30 am and stays until 9pm. She is an amazing woman who, even with her health issues, has been the rock for dad as she cares for him at his bedside. He likes to introduce her to the nurses as "the boss."

Currently, he can only have 2 family visitors at his bedside since it is the ICU. While I am sure he would love to see all of you - at this time, prayer remains our number one request. He can not have anything in his room (but his granddaughters did do a wonderful job putting posters of pictures together of all his grandchildren and children for him to see).

Please check back daily for more informaiton on Shug's condition. We will post an entry at least once a day or when his condition changes. Thanks to the hundreds of people who are already praying - Dad's faith is in the Lord - so we ask all of you to join him by putting your faith in the Lord too - for a miracle healing. . . for a normal blood pressure. . . for movement and feeling on his left side and of course. . . for our encourager "Shug" to return to us and fight with all he's got to beat this.