07 February - 2005

    Two weeks.  It has been two weeks since I took Clint to the emergency room in the middle of the night with pneumonia and in septic shock.  I was afraid he would die.  He could have died.  He was sick in the afternoon on Sunday, the day after I last wrote in this book.  I tried to get him to go to urgent care, but he refused.  I hated the way he looked, but I agreed to wait.  I called Macon for medicine for his nausea, but it didn’t work.  I asked again if he would go the urgent care, and he said he felt too bad, too weak.  We waited, he slept and coughed and vomited from time to time.  He woke me at 1:30 in the morning, saying he couldn’t breathe.  I got dressed and got him to the emergency room, had to get his walker out of the attic for him to walk.  He nearly died.  He had no blood pressure when we got there.  I sat with him in the ER and watched his blood pressure go lower before they MDs put him on dopamine.  I  feel so guilty that I didn’t insist we get help when he first got sick and his color was so bad.  I sat on him and let him almost die.  I will never forgive myself.  Now he is almost ready to come home and I am sleeping at home.  They unhooked his iv antibiotics today and also his hyperal.  I think I can bring him home by Wednesday.  It has been one long nightmare, unbelievable.  I have never been so scared in my life.  I have never felt so helpless.  I have never been so grateful to see Kristy and Gretchen.  I have never been so disappointed in Robert and Shannon.  I have never been so tired.  




During the rest of that horrible year, Clint's knee got infected again, but the MDs tried to save it and nearly killed him in doing so.  He was on IV antibiotics as well as oral.  We spent weeks going to an infusion center seven days a week.  All the meds accomplished was that his immune system was shot when they got finished.  It was November of that year before they took his knee out and December when they put in yet another prosthetic knee.