Jesse’s Medical Journey – as of 5-15-14 by Dave Sternberg
On October 15, 2013, riding as the passenger in a car, Jesse was in an accident when the driver lost control. He broke his neck…and then had 3 consecutive cases of pneumonia, the second case causing him to go code blue twice,,,and had his vocal cords paralyzed, probably in his first surgery…and got a sacrum pressure wound …and had a golf ball-sized abscess in his neck as a result of 3 holes in his esophagus which were caused by bone possibly left from one of his first surgeries that looked like a pencil point in the back of his neck scratching the esophagus from the back with every swallow . That resulted in an 8-hour surgery on New Year’s eve, two and a half months after his initial accident and first two surgeries. The esophageal patch surgery involved abscess removal, anterior plate removal, hip bone removal and spinal fusion, stomach tissue removal for the esophagus patch and a scar the runs from under his chin all the way to the base of his long neck on the right side!
That was the first two and a half months, almost no rehab between all the sickness and surgery. What has followed was no better. After the surgery he was put on heavy doses of antibiotics that made him nauseous for 35 straight days! He learned to fight throwing up, but it happened often during this time. He couldn’t hold down food put into his g-tube and his nutrition took a nose dive along with his pressure wound.
Finally in early February he was taken off the antiobiotics that were making him sick and started feeling better. He was sitting up for 2-3 hours at a time in his wheelchair and ready to work on rehab. At the time he was on a low level dose of Cymbalta and felt it had not helped him feel better so we asked the psychiatrist the hospital brought in to see him and prescribe these drugs to take him off. Instead she put him on an increased dose, didn’t tell the patient or the doctors what to look for in terms of adverse reactions – and left town. (It was a Friday, Feb. 7, 2014) That weekend he showed significant documented adverse reactions. When his attending doctors returned on Monday and were told of what was happening (profuse sweating, dizziness/can’t sit up, uncontrollable crying) the doctors chose not to change the psychiatrist’s orders and with some ugly details in the middle, long story short, he was left on the higher dose for 12 days!
The result, three months later, as of this writing, he is still sweating profusely several times every day and still cannot tolerate sitting up for more than 10 minutes! During this time he would develop 3 more pressure wounds as a result of not being able to sit up. His large, now stage 4, pressure wound become the open port for the MRSA virus and he contracted that as well resulting in a staph-based bronchitis. The further result was too many months lying in bed, causing difficulty breathing, more pressure wounds and a tracheotomy that is still not removed. 7 months after a devastating injury, through a series of unavoidable and very avoidable setbacks, he still has not had a chance to truly rehab!
During the month of May, he has been at a long-term acute care hospital where his bronchitis has been treated, his wounds are healed or healing and he has gotten much stronger. On June 9, 2014, Jesse will get his chance to truly rehab. He will be going to the Kennedy Kreiger Institute. Read more about it in the blog on this site – Chapter 8.