When he called me that night, August 4, he was still in terrific pain. They were giving him Morphine with no relief and Percoset with no relief. Tuesday morning I talked to him again and he was getting a little relief from the pain. He said his wrist was the only thing hurting, but it was still swollen. By the time I got to the hospital, Tuesday night about 7:00 PM, his Creatinine was very, very elevated, he was confused and talking out of his head. His blood pressure was about 80/40. I went home and in about an hour they called and told me his kidneys had failed and they were moving him to the Critical Care Unit. I went back to the hospital. When he entered Critical Care have was in respiratory distress, his kidneys had completely failed and his blood pressure was 70/40. He had high blood pressure and when he had to go to the doctor, it was always 220/130 or within that range, so it was very low. Wednesday morning Infectious Disease had been called in to see him and they made the diagnosis of Necrotizing Fasciitis. He had surgery on his arm at 1:00 PM Wednesday afternoon, it was left open to drain. He had dialysis Wednesday afternoon and they were giving him several different IV antibiotics.

After the surgery they began to tell me how critical he was and about 10:00 that night they told me they expected him to code before the night was over. His blood ph level was so low (down to 6) it was not compatible with life. He expired at 2:40 AM Thursday morning. From the time they admitted him to Critical Care to the time he expired was about 28 hours. I didn’t have time to get used to the idea that he was that sick before he was gone at 33 years old.