Thursday, March 10th, 2005

Sam is having a real good day.  They got almost all of the blood pressure medicine off.  Tonight it started looking like he had another pneumothorax on his left lung.  They let it go to see if it would fix itself.  The rest of his counts are good.

--Katie Jessop's Journal Entry

Friday, March 11th, 2005

This morning they put in his chest tubes on the left and right.  His blood counts were dropping because the Dilantin that he was on for seizure control was suppressing his bone marrow.  Sam had blood in his lungs and stomach because his platelets were only 39,000 (normal is between 150,000-450,000--Bec).  They gave him blood products and, later in the day, things started to turn around.

--Katie Jessop's Journal Entry

**I remember this very well--it was very scary!  I was on my way home from Lansing to visit Sam (I had to go back to school by this point) and my dad called me to tell me that Sam had a reaction to Dilantin and  was bleeding out and they didn't know if he would make it.  Dr. Al (Sam's intensivist) was very worried about his condition at this point, too.  But, once again, somehow things turned around and he was a little better by the time I got there about an hour later.  Miracles, miracles and more miracles for Sammy.

---Bec