Poor Mark!

You haven't heard from me since Tuesday because at dawn on Wednesday morning just as he was beginning to get off work Mark ended up in an emergency room down on the coast of Louisiana.  He called me as soon as he was there when I had just gotten to work at 6:30 AM.  So I left and drove on down to where he was at the Lady of the Sea Hospital -- more than 2 hours away from Baton Rouge.  VERY stressful on my way down, but nothing like it was when I got in there!

 

 

He looked and sounded like he was in horrible pain.  They had given him pain meds so he was more out than not, but each time he woke up and began to talk he was back in terrible pain and wasn't speaking at all clearly.  It turned out he had a bowel obstruction of some sort that put him in that horrendous pain beginning just a few minutes after he reached shore.  Because they had moved the rig while he was out there this time, they came ashore at a different place than where they went out to the rig to begin with, so they got on a bus and were about to be driven back over to where they all left their cars, but just a few minutes after the bus took off, he went into that awful pain and they stopped and called an ambulance that took him over to the Lady of the Sea hospital clear down there in Cut Off, Louisiana.

 

 

 

Because they knew he might well need surgery, they asked if they could do that there, but he preferred to be in a hospital here in Baton Rouge, so the company called another ambulance that drove him up to the Lake and that's where he still is.  The surgeon there said yesterday that they would be waiting until Monday to see first of all if the obstruction might resolve by then (yet another CT scan, blood tests, etc.), although that's unlikely, and also to be sure the blood thinner he's been taking since he had those heart stents a couple years back has gone down enough that the surgery won't be as dangerous.  So if there has been no change in the obstruction by Monday he will probably be having surgery on Tuesday.  Then he will need to stay in the hospital for probably another week.  I'm sure he won't be in any condition to go back to work next time just 10 or 11 days from now.  So I guess he'll just take off his next 2-week work period, but he should be well enough to go back to work the following time.

 

So he'll be at the Lake for quite a while yet.  But he does seem to be in better shape there at this point. 

 

When I come in he's generally asleep because of that pain medication.

but when I get in there he generally wakes up and feels well enough to speak now --
something he really didn't want to do at all down there in the emergency room!

I just really hope whatever they determine is the cause of the obstruction won't be anything dangerous in the future.

 

But a worse thing about this than missing work is that his sister Judy over in Lafayette is very close to death -- they are predicting that she will be going to sleep and not waking again sometime over just the next few days or a week.  But because of this obstruction issue, Mark won't be able to go and visit with her before she's gone.  So, so sad.

 

I'll tell you what -- when this surgery is over and he gets to come home I'm sure going to appreciate his company even more than I usually do - which is a LOT anyway!  I can't imagine what life would be like if anything were to happen to him! 

 

Oh, and as for his car, one of the guys he works with who was driving through Baton Rouge to go home, drove his car over here and parked it just off the interstate and Vickie and I went over and picked it up Thursday morning.  Very nice of him to help him out with that.  SO glad Vickie and I didn't have to drive hours away to go get it!

 

Okay, it's getting late and I haven't even fed the dogs yet tonight.  I better get on with it so I can get some sleep and get back to the hospital in the morning.