Brian here from Cincinnati.  The last 24 hours have been critical ones, more critical that I realized in the midst of last night / early morning, and maybe that was for the best. Only now am I beginning to realize the nature of last night's crisis.   We hope that the worst is over now, but JT still has a long way to go before he's out of the woods; the emergency surgery last night was drastic and terrible in its own right.  His little body has so much healing to do.

As Jodi related, his left arm contined to swell as he continued to lose mobility.  Nobody wanted to pull the trigger on the surgery unnecessarily but things moved quickly and decisively once there was talk of potentially losing the arm.  I was stunned.  Thank God they acted when they did.

The doctors have unwrapped the arm twice today.  It was truly gruesome, the worst thing I've seen (visually) in the history of his complex medical journey.  Truly, I was unprepared for the sight of these huge, gaping, open vents in his arm with the drains protruding out several inches in all directions.  Frankly, it's the most gruesome thing I've ever seen in my life, by a wide margin.  It scared JT and me both.  The second time they came to unwrap it we both agreed to look away together.  I didn't understand how drastic the procedure would be.

The procedure didn't do anything magical to deal with the infection except allow the antibiotics to do their job.  The sensitivity studies revealed that this staph infection is resistant to the antibiotic initially prescribed, so now he's on three different antibiotics at once, the big guns, and we pray that they clean this thing up pronto.

The orthopedic surgeon who did the procedure last night is the head of the entire department, and the infectious disease doctor we're working with is impressive as well.  Dr. Marsh is the attending BMT doctor and she's terrific.  The nurse we had last night was a Godsend - she's the one who was proactive about the swelling and alerted the docs of the problem - it didn't seem like a big deal to me at first so we're fortunate for her professionalism and initiative.  Dr. Wally pushed to make this happen, esp. at the beginning, and the orthopedic 2nd in command was on the ball as well.  I guess what I'm trying to say is that despite the awful nature of what they were confronting, the team here was extraordinary, from our nurse to our surgeon and everyone in between. 

And truly, thank God we were here.  At home, we'd have likely chalked the swelling up to a bug bite or some other thing and put him to bed at 8:00 in Grove City and the outcome may well have been catastrophic.  This type of flesh-eating bacteria is extremely, extremely rare, and things might have gone much differently at home.   

So we're thanking God for taking good care of our son through his people in the medical field.  And we're thankful that we were here when it happened.  At the same time, it's been plenty dicey, and he has quite a way to go.  Please pray earnestly for complete healing, total eradication of this bacteria and all things well.

JT's birthday (and mine) is Tuesday.  The surgeon is talking of scheduling him for the operating room to close up these wounds on that day, so that could be a terrific present.  Jodi is coming down for a little hospital celebration so we're talking about it quite a bit - it's a bright light for us.

Thanks for checking in.  Please pray for the complete healing of his arm and that this bacteria will be completely knocked out.

One more thing - JT has been cheerful, positive, upbeat, brave, and tough the whole time.  There's been very litte complaining, very few tears.  He's been taking it all in stride, laughing and playing homespun versions of basketball and bowling here in the room.  I'm the TV announcer...."Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, introducing Jacob Treebeard Brown, the amazing boy who bowls better with one arm than most grownups do with two..."

That's it for tonight.  Thanks you and please pray.