Happy Easter!

Hi Everyone!-

Just wanted you to know that Jerry is doing well. The infection is gone, and they are trying to find him a bed at the rehab facility. The hope is that he will move back to Blue Ridge this week. He looks great- and is VERY focused on his recovery. Of course, he's ready to fire up the grill and have a cookout with all his loved ones and friends!

He wants everyone to know how much your cards and well-wishes continue to mean to him. Anna Leigh had not visited in several weeks because of his condition. Today was the first visit for her in quite some time, and he enjoyed every second of it! Anna Leigh, of course, had to show off her new haircut, and he was ever the doting grandfather!

Thanks again for ALL the prayers! We firmly believe that God is working miracles with Jerry- EVERY DAY! Just as there was the miracle of Christ's resurrection, we continue to see evidence of His power working through Jerry to show us how someone can truly be "reborn".

TEAM JERRY ALL THE WAY!!!!!!

Doing Better!!!

Hey folks!!!

As the post title indicates, Dad is doing better. The doctors have visited with Dad over the past few days and talked to Mom about Dad's prognosis. Everything seems to indicate a full recovery, which is a true blessing. The hospital wants to keep him for observation for a while just in case the infection comes back so they can attack it quickly. So they have started working on his therapy with him so that he doesn't get any further behind in his GBS recovery.

That's all for now. I'll post more detail once we get some more info from the doctors. From the bottom of our hearts, thank you so much for your well wishes and prayers. They really help Dad and the family to get through this whole ordeal. Take care!

Team Jerry all the way!

Out of Recovery & Back in his Room

Hey everyone!

Dad had his procedure done this morning and everything appears to be OK. The doctor put a shunt in to allow the kidney stone to pass through when it comes out of his kidney. There were no major concerns with what he found in Dad's kidney or bladder, but the doctor took samples of a few areas and are sending it off to be tested just to be sure. We will hopefully know by Thursday how well the shunt is working, as well as the test results to see if there is anything else that needs to be addressed.

For right now, Dad is back in his room and is resting comfortably. Mom is spending the night with him, which brightened up Dad's eyes when he found out. She also took his laptop down so he could work his Farmville. In addition, this means you can email him and send your well wishes.

I'll let you know more as it comes in. Thanks again for all your prayers. Let's pray that all the test come back normal and he passes the kidney stone soon.

Team Jerry all the way!!!

Update on Kidneys!

Hey folks! Just a quick update on the latest info with Dad.

The Urologist did a sonogram today on Dad's kidneys to see how they are functioning. He found a rather large stone in the tube exiting the right kidney that may or may not account for the elevated creatinine in Dad's blood. As Mom explained to me, elevated creatinine means the kidney is not able to operate correctly for some reason. In this case, it may be due to the stone partially blocking the tube coming out of the kidney. This is good news, as it would indicate that the medicine Dad had to take for the infection may not have hurt his kidneys after all.

There is a procedure schedule for Wednesday morning at 10am, where the doctor plans to go in and get the stone. I won't go into details about the procedure, as it hurts me to just think about it. But needless to say, Dad will need a little anesthetic (I'd need a lot), as the procedure is not that invasive. If everything works out, this may help the cretinine levels to normalize. Mom plans to be there for the procedure.

Please keep Dad and Mom in your prayers tonight and tomorrow, and pray that this procedure will fix the problem with Dad's kidneys. We'll try to update you as we hear more about how Dad did during the procedure and if this fixes the problem.

Team Jerry all the way!!!

Get those Prayers going!

Hey folks!

I have a lot to tell you about Dad and a short time to type it in, so here goes:

Dad is still at Rex Hospital in Raleigh. This is where they sent him for his infection. He is out of ICU and they have stopped the antibiotics that they were giving Dad to kill the bacteria in his blood and urine. This is all good news and we are very thankful for it.

On the flip side, Dad has developed issues with his kidneys. The doctors don't know for sure, but it appears that Dad's kidneys may have been adversely affected by the medicine that they had to give him. So they are calling in a kidney specialist to look at Dad and his case to determine the cause of the kidney issues.

Dad is also not able to breath on his own anymore. While Dad is still stronger than he use to be before starting the ventilator therapy, he is experiencing enough problems with his breathing for the doctors to err on the side of caution and keep him on the ventilator. Of course, you're probably saying the same thing we are... oh great, here we go again. But we are reminding Dad that he overcame this issue before and he can do it again.

That's it for now. Please pass the word along to anyone you know to put Dad on a prayer list and get those prayer chains going. Dad is truly facing an uphill battle over the next few days/weeks. All we can do is what we've been doing, which is hope and pray for the best and just put it in God's hands.

If you'd like to send Dad a message of encouragement or a Get Well card, feel free to mail it to him at PO Box 2364, Danville, VA, 24541. Or you can email him at jhawkins51@comcast.net.

Team Jerry all the way!!!

Doing Better

Hey everyone!

Just wanted to let you know that Dad is doing better now. He is still at the hospital as they wind down the antibiotic cocktail, but will hopefully be back at the rehab facility within the next few days.

Thanks again for all of the prayers and emails of well-wishes. They were really appreciated!

Take care and we'll update the blog again real soon.

Team Jerry all the way!!!

Getting There...

Hi everyone!

Dad appears to be doing better after a few days of antibiotics. They identified the bacteria causing his infection. And if I knew how to say it, I might come close to spelling it. Needless to say, I'm not going to attempt either. But I can say that it is a nasty super bug. We read about it on the web and it is most prevalent in the big cities, but is starting to make its way to smaller cities and towns. It is a bug that is mostly found in patients who are housed in medical facilities for the long term, which would fit Dad to a tee right now.

The scariest thing about the bug is that it can be very serious and is somewhat resistant to certain antibiotics. In fact, the hospital here had to special order the medicine Dad is on due to the rare need for it. But we were prepared for this finding, as it fits in with the last 9 months of "uniqueness". Everyone seems to be confident that Dad will get better, it's just going to take time.

Of course, Dad is disappointed about the setback, but he knows its just a minor one for right now. It helped that Anna Leigh made him a card that told him to hang in there and how much she loved him. You could tell that it really touched his heart when we gave it to him, as he was grinning from ear-to-ear, something he hadn't done for the past week.

Well, that's all for now. We'll let you know more as information comes available. We don't believe he will be moved from ICU this weekend like we had hoped, but we'll see.

If you want to send well wishes via email, Mom and Dad's new email address is: jhawkins51@comcast.net, or post comments to this blog post.

Thank you so much for your continued support and prayers.

Team Jerry all the way!!!