Please keep in your thoughts and prayers Robyn's sister Lisa, who is critically ill and has been in the ICU in Athens, GA since March 8th. Robyn wrote me a letter about it, which you can read by clicking the details link. The more positive energy we can generate that way, the better. Thank you.
More Details
I'd really appreciate it if you could post this on the dent to get more thoughts and prayers behind my sister, Lisa. She's critically ill and has been for 2 weeks. I'm just to the point where i can discuss it without breaking down so I'm finally trying to get the word out to have more prayers and thoughts and energy directed her way.
She has been in the ICU in Athens, GA since March 8th. She somehow (we're still not sure how) contracted a Staph infection (Staph. Aureus) in her bloodstream. She was perfectly healthy on the 5th, felt like she had the flu on the 6th, was worse on the 7th and in Serious condition in the ICU on the 8th. She's 36, a health and exercise nut and, fortunately, really strong. The infection is brutal. It attacked her bone marrow so it couldn't produce what it was supposed to and her platelets were very low, along w/ both her white and red blood cell counts. Because of all of these factors she developed pneumonia in both lungs and had to be placed on a ventilator on the 10th. She was escalated to Critical condition at that point. I flew out the next day and spent a few days there but had to retun home to close escrow on our house and take care of myself in general (i'm pregnant and this whole thing is really wearing me down).
She is still in critical condition but has been progressing in the right direction in the last few days. Her blood cultures have come back clean and they've got the ventilator set so she's doing some of the breathing. She also is recognizing my mom and my dad and responding to stimulus (nodding her head, squeezing her fingers, wiggling her toes). The next step at this point is to get her stable enough for heart surgery because the infection has taken root in her mitral valve and it has to be replaced before the infection breaks off from there and reinfects her blood.
It's an amazingly delicate and complex situation. I'm not looking for cards or letters or anything like that, i'm just trying to get a large ball of prayer and energy built up and aimed at Georgia :)
Thanks so much!!!
BTW, we don't know how the infection got so severe but we think we know the source and there is some information out there about a very disturbing practice taking place that could infect more people. She was studying water quality in sewage treatment plants.
http://list.web.net/archives/sludgewatch-l/2002-August/000105.html
http://www.umwa.org/journal/VOL113NO2/mar2.shtml
Robyn (vampandora)
