Not much change...

As far as an update for today, not a lot has changed. Janet is still fighting a severe infection. She is not conscious right now due to being sedated. They are turning down her sedation and her pain medication in hope of getting her to wake up a bit. She is on a ventilator and is not breathing on her own at this point. She is continuing to receive IV antibiotics, but her white blood cell count has not started coming down yet. Her heart and her liver have been pretty stressed and there is some damage to both. She isn't really digesting the tube feeding (through a tube in her mouth to her stomach) at this point, which just means that her gut needs to wake up a bit. Janet's left arm has some dark purple mottling from a previous lack of circulation. Her arm looks like its going to be okay, but they are doing ultrasound tests on her fingers... they are worried about her first finger on her left hand which is very purple and cold. There is a possibility that she could lose it...   They are also working to wean her off the medications that are keeping her blood pressure high enough to perfuse everything as it should (internal organs, etc). Janet's electrolytes and blood work is still a little off as well and they are working to get that back in balance.  Her platelets and blood clotting ability is low, so they are continuing to make sure she isn't having any active bleeding anywhere.  Her chest x-ray looked fine today which is a good thing since there is a very high risk of pneumonia when a patient is on a ventilator.

The big picture is that Janet's situation is very serious. Her body has undergone a major storm of events from septic shock which started from infection overwhelming her body. Janet is stabilized at this point, but she has a LOT of work ahead of her to recover from all of this. This isn't going to be over in a few days with Janet just bouncing back to normal life. Today, they are beginning to turn down the ventilator settings a little at a time.  As I mentioned, at this point, Janet is totally dependent on the ventilator to breathe for her. It will be a process to wean her off, hopefully in the next day or two.

I know for so many people it is really tough to wrap our minds around how very sick Janet is right now. Please keep praying for her!  Pray for her family as they process all of this, and as it is going to be a long haul for all of them.