19. Jenna

                                    

                                          
I ran down the hallway of the hospital in Lincoln. It was early in the morning and I hadn't slept a wink since the news. But I had enough adrenaline keeping me going. 
Tyler was right behind me, Jake at his heels. Debby and Josh had kept the girls for us. Tyler and I needed to get to Nebraska as quickly as possible and travelling with a toddler and a baby was more than I could handle right now. 
We'd been told where Samantha was. She was in the ICU and I worried what that might mean. But for now the important thing is my daughter is alive. 
Jake had gotten information as we'd rushed to the airport. We'd thrown about a week's worth of clothes into a bag and fled westward to be with our daughter. 
Jake told us she had an infection in her stump. Again. He said the paramedics said it looked like there was a sore on her stump that had gotten infected and the infection had gotten into her blood. She was critical at this point. They had also told Jake that her blood sugar was high and Samantha was mostly unresponsive. She hadn't spoken but had opened her eyes a couple of times during transport and in the emergency room. But she hadn't been able to tell them anything. She was delirious and had had a seizure that they thought may have been attributed to the fever. It was 105° when they got to her. She'd been very unstable as they'd transported her. 
I slid to a halt outside the ICU, trying to catch my breath. I didn't know how we'd find Samantha. In what state? Was she conscious? 
Tyler and Jake came up beside me 
"They probably won't let me in, so I'll wait out here for you. Go. Go see Samantha."
I nodded and thanked Jake for helping, for coming with us, and for relaying information to us as he got it. 
Tyler picked up the phone on the desk outside the ICU and announced us to whoever answered. They told Tyler to wait just a minute and someone would be out to talk with us. I looked at him when he relayed that to me. What does that mean?
"Tyler, what does that mean?  Why won't they just let us in?"
"I don't know, Jen. I'm sure they'll explain," Tyler said. I know he knew my question was, really, rhetorical but I also know he answered because he needed to. 
The doors opened and we were greeted by a nurse, a doctor and a police officer. My heart dropped. I feared the worst. Samantha hadn't made it through the night. Tyler's hand tightened in mine. 
"Mr. and Mrs. Joseph?" The doctor said.  "Why don't we sit down over here?"
He indicated a group of chairs in the waiting area. Not secluded, but we were the only ones out here right now anyway. Shakily, I made my way over to the chairs, my hand tightly gripping Tyler's. 
Jake introduced himself to the doctor and the police officer. The police officer introduced himself to us and said he'd been stationed at Samantha's room until we arrived. The nurse was smiling at us. I was still terrified we'd hear the worst news we could after everything. 
I sat down. Tyler sat beside me and took my hand again. 
"My name is Doctor David Smith," the doctor started. "I'm an internal medicine specialist in the intensive care unit. This is Amanda. She's one of our nurses and she'll be Samantha's nurse today. She started at seven this morning."
I nodded. Still terrified. 
Wait. 'Will be' Samantha's nurse. Samantha was alive. I breathed a sigh of relief. 
"Let me tell you what we've encountered so far and what has been done," Dr. Smith said. I nodded. 
"Samantha came in last night with a fever of 105°. The paramedics said she had a seizure in the field that they think may have been due to the fever. It's not uncommon," he said. 
"Samantha has had seizures before," Tyler said. "She's had a couple of pretty severe head injuries and those can cause her to have seizures as well. But I think she's also had febrile seizures?" 
He turned to me for verification. I nodded. 
"Okay. Well, she hasn't had a seizure since she's been in our care, which still leads me to believe it's from the fever."
"Has it come down?" Tyler asked. 
"Just a little. Last temperature check was 104.5°. So it's slowly coming down, but we just got her on antibiotics less than twelve hours ago, so we aren't expecting much change for a little while."
"Okay," I said. 
"She has an infection on the stump of her right leg. It looks like a pressure sore, or a sore from wearing the sock she'd wear before putting on a prosthetic?" 
I nodded. 
"Yes. She has a prosthetic leg," I said.  "Wasn't she wearing it?"
"She was not," the doctor said. 
I wondered briefly where her leg was. But that wasn't the most important thing right now, anyway. 
"She's quite sick right now. She's septic, meaning the infection has made it into her bloodstream," he continued. We nodded. We'd been here before. We knew sepsis. We also knew how dangerous it can be. 
"We're keeping an eye on that sore. I'm not sure if it'll need surgical intervention at this point.  We're hitting her hard with strong broad spectrum antibiotics.  We'll continue to assess that in the coming days. 
Her blood sugars are not behaving either. They're remaining quite high. However, her body is under a tremendous amount of stress. We did notice she has a pump. It looks like it ran out of insulin quite a while ago. We have her on an insulin drip, and we are seeing slow improvement in her blood sugar. 
We've got her sedated right now because between the high sugar and the fever and delirium, she's been a bit combative. She needs the rest and the sedation is letting her get some much needed rest. 
I'll warn you when you go in to see her, it looks like she's lost a fair bit of weight. We weighed her at 105 pounds."
I wasn't sure if Samantha's weight before Mark took her, but I know she was much closer to 130 or 135 the last time she was weighed at her doctor's. 105 was way too low for her. Had Mark not been feeding her? Or was her out of control diabetes the reason for the weight loss?  I asked the doctor his opinion.  
"It could be a mixture of both. We haven't been able to get much history as your daughter hasn't been stable enough to talk to us, and I doubt her... uncle," at this he rolled his eyes. "I doubt he would be much of a medical historian."
I nodded. 
"Now, that was all the bad news I have for you."
"For bad news," Tyler said. "That's not terrible."
"No. I expect Samantha will make a full recovery from this. We'll get her sugar under control and once we get her infection under control, I see no reason why she won't improve quickly. I can't give you a timeline because we just started treatment early this morning. But I'm cautiously optimistic. 
Let me take you to your daughter," Dr. Smith said. 
The sweetest seven words I'd heard all day.