Dannette Gora Today was our 30th day of Derek being in the hospital. I remember calling our family doctor at 5am the morning I took him to the hospital and asking if he thought the people in ER would laugh at us and send us home (in my mind, I was taking him in for a fever and a headache). Thankfully our doctor encouraged us to go…otherwise who knows what would have happened in the next day or so.
I’m also SO thankful for the doctors and nurses at the St. Anthony’s Hospital in Michigan City. The nurses that took care of us on our patient floor when we first got there were so on top of his needs…and that was before the wheels fell off the bus and he needed critical care. I think we had them running in every hour because of the crazy problems he was having. That was actually a very hard week for Derek, he was very sick…so sick that he doesn’t even remember being there at all. The last thing he remembers is patting Rigby on the head that morning we left and telling him not to cry. We also had quite a few really great doctors running tests and working on Derek while we were there in the ICU, and they were the ones who kept him ALIVE during his rapid decline. We’ve had doctors at both hospitals tell us what a rare case a Derek is…mainly because he was a completely healthy and strong man who got very sick, very quick with no idea what started it all. So anyway, I just wanted to put that out there. There are two hospitals that we owe Derek’s life to…and we’re grateful to both.