<$BlogRSDUrl$>
Essentially Esther Banner

Saturday, September 25, 2004

A LONG 48-HOURS....MARCH 1980 

While Becky and I sat in the waiting room of the ER doctors began coming and going like crazy. This went on until noon when Dr. Bergfelder came out and told me to go to the front office and admit Warren because he was a very sick man. He and several of the other specialists had looked at him and had a few theories but they weren’t sure of anything right now.

Warren was given pain shots every half hour and nothing was giving him any relief. By 3:00pm they told us he would have to have surgery on the leg to see what was going on…..at 5:00pm he was taken to OR and we were left in his room. Becky and I tried to make sense out of the events of the day and the worst part was knowing that even the doctors didn’t know what was going on with him.

We had grown quiet, each of us sitting with our own thoughts, when a good friend from church walked into the room. He heard about Warren’s situation at school when he didn’t show up for work. On instinct he drove the 85-miles to Fort Leonard Wood Hospital to see if he could be of any help. He came prepared with his Bible and had prayer with us and then the three of us waited for Warren to come back to the room.

We didn’t get to see Warren until around 10:30pm. The doctors took me aside and told me the bad news. He had contracted strep infection that went to his leg instead of staying in the throat which is more common. He put it like this….the streptococci found an area of his body that had either been punctured or mashed and the strep became lethal in a matter of hours. It was a deadly, fast moving infection that travels through the muscle tissue and kills it as it goes. He called it necrotizing fasciaetis, a flesh eating bacteria.

They cut into his left thigh and a gray fluid ran out on the operating table. It was muscle tissue that had literally been destroyed in less than 24-hours. The doctors continued to question me…did he have a bite, did he have a puncture, a scratch…anything that would have let the strep into his system…and especially to the leg area. The answer was always “no.” There was no reason at all for him to have contracted this virus. The doctors were as puzzled as I was….it was a one in a million case and Warren had it.

I sent Becky back home with Dean and I was taken to a guest house on Base. I got up at 4:30am and drove back to the hospital. I was afraid something would happen to Warren and I wouldn’t be there. The birds were already singing and if my situation had been different it would have been the beginning of a beautiful Spring day. I could only see Warren at intervals because he was in ICU and kept away from others even there…..he was terribly septic and they didn’t want anything transferred to the other patients. His area was ice cold.

When the doctor came he was no less than a Colonel and accompanied by two Majors. The case had been picked up by them as it was so unusual. One of the Majors had taken his internship in a Chicago hospital and had seen one case like this before. The only difference was that the man had it in both legs and died. Because of his experience with the virus he had been given the responsibility to oversee Warren’s battle with it.

They unwrapped his thigh and showed me what they had done. If you can envision a canoe and the way it is hollowed out….picture a leg with that same procedure. The incision was to the bone and the tissue was all gone from above his knee almost to the hip. It was packed with gauze because it was still draining ....his only hope of survival.

He looked terrible but they had his pain under control. Our pastor and wife brought Becky back and she made arrangements to stay with me. She brought fresh clothing and my cosmetics. The church began a prayer vigil around the clock and by the end of the day everyone in our small town had heard of Warren’s battle. Frank and Vera left around 2:00pm and Becky and I noticed that more and more equipment was brought into the area where Warren was. We stayed in the hall because we could only see him every 15-minutes of each hour.

The situation was very tense as medics came and went all afternoon. The Colonel stepped into the hall and told us his temperature kept going up throughout the day and we were going to lose him if we didn’t amputate. He had the papers for me to sign and we watched as they made rapid preparations to remove him from the equipment of ICU and hurry him out on a gurney.

As they wheeled him out of the room on the way back to OR Warren gave us a big smile and a thumbs up…when they were out of sight Becky and I stood looking out of the window for some time, trying to take in the last 48-hours. He left the room at 7:15pm and Chaplin Farr came to sit with us until the surgery was over. At 11:15 we heard the gurney coming back down the hall. We braced ourselves for whatever the doctor would have to say……..

Until tomorrow,
Essentially Esther