Helping Mom

On March 23, Kaleb went to bed and told me that his leg was really hurting. When he woke the next morning, he was still insistent that his leg hurt and that he couldn’t go to school. Seeing how much discomfort he was in, I decided to take him to urgent care to be evaluated. Much to my surprise and concern, they recommended that I take him immediately to the emergency room.

Upon arrival at the hospital, it was not exactly clear what was causing his pain. Given how much discomfort he was in, he was admitted to the hospital. When his pain worsened, they did imaging of his legs and did blood work only to find that he had a severe infection of his hip joint. The infection was caused by a bacteria called staph aureus, and it quickly spread to the surrounding muscle tissue. He was taken urgently to the operating room where surgeons opened up his hip to drain the pus out of the area. The infection had spread to his blood stream at that point and he was briefly taken to the intensive care unit afterwards as they had to keep him on the ventilator overnight.

Since then, he has remained in the hospital and has had an additional two surgeries to fully clean out his infection. As he slowly recovered, he suffered yet another complication when he started to develop a large amount of blood in his urine. It was discovered that one of the medications he was getting for pain was damaging his kidneys. The doctors have been hopeful that with time he would improve, but his condition has persisted and he continues to remain in the hospital. As of today, he is scheduled for a kidney biopsy next week to verify the exact nature of his kidney injury and to figure out the next steps going forward

As a result of his condition, I have not been able to work for the past two weeks, not only to be there for Kaleb, but also to take care of his little sister at home. The doctors feel that he might be in the hospital for at least the next 2-3 weeks, and he may require up to 2 months of rehabilitation after that. Given our circumstances, my friends and family have encouraged me to set up a GoFundMe page to help support me and my children during Kaleb’s recovery. Although I have an extremely hard time asking for help, I need to swallow my pride to ask for any help that others might be able to provide so that I can continue to be able to aid Kaleb in his recovery.

Thank you all for listening, and please keep Kaleb in your prayers in the days and weeks to come.