10 February 2008

Buyer Beware

I've been totally bummed out at this sad news. I've never said a word to Kelly K, but I kept up on her progress almost everyday and it's just so sad to know that she is gone. It's just another reminder that this surgery is serious stuff and it requires careful consideration before anyone makes the decision to sign on the dotted line. I was completely committed to having this surgery until less than two weeks before when my older brother died from a massive heart attack, he was only 54 years old, but in poor health - diabetes, high blood pressure, morbidly obese, etc. That shook me to the core and I was pretty convinced that I was gonna die, but was able to get my head straight, talk to my parents & family and decide to go ahead and go to Brazil. I held on to the belief that this was my one and only chance to turn it all around for myself and I knew my brother would want me to go, so I did. Any pre-ops out there need to know that this is a big decision and that you are best served by looking at this surgery and it's risks as objectively as possible.

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1 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Kelly had some very severe health problems going in, probably the worst of which was sarcoidosis. She was on steroids and basically chemotherapy for that, which further suppressed her already compromised immune system. So she was extremely high risk from the get-go. She was turned down by at least one other surgeon because of her illness. However, all her long time docs, specialists etc. signed off on her for the procedure.

Her DS procedure went smoothly. She was discharged from the hospital in a timely manner and was just about ready to go home to VA when she developed a wound infection. This was treated with general success. Then when she was extubated (I forget how long after the wound treatment that was, a matter of a couple days maybe?), she gave a huge COUGH, so big that she blew the repaired wound open.

Thus began the saga of open wound care, ventilator dependency and repeat infections, including MRSA and oddball fungal things, from which she never really recovered. She was never totally off the ventilator after her initial infection. So it was a cycle of infection, breathing issues and side effects from the treatment of both issues, and her depleted system lost what little recuperative power it had going in. She eventually went into septic shock and suffered massive organ failure.

February 17, 2008 at 1:39 AM  

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