10/25/2023
Now that we have a clearer picture of his injuries I just wanted to give an update to anyone wanting to follow along with Jays current situation. Here’s sort of a recap of what has transpired so far:
I know most people know what happened but just to keep the information accurate on his way home from the gym last Wednesday night Jay was hit head on by a driver going the wrong direction down his lane as he was entering a highway. The person driving the other car was intoxicated and we’ve since learned has multipole DUI’s on his record. He was killed in the crash.
Jay had three surgeries in the first 36 hours. This is what his injury situation turned out to be:
Warning: some people may find this graphic so if you’re really squeamish you may want to skip it.
ABDOMEN:
The full body scan they did when he came in showed he had bleeding in his stomach and he was taken pretty quickly into surgery. They found traumatic injury to areas of the bowel and colon and he ended up having two significant tears. There were a couple of different resections and he was left open that night with his intestines in three parts. The plan was to go back in 36 hours later to assess whether or not things seemed to be calming down and healing or dying.
The first good news we’d had since this whole thing started came after the second surgery which was done Friday morning and lasted a very long five hours. When they went in things looked good and they somehow found a way to be able to reconnect everything and felt solid enough about it to close him up. We were told the chance that would happen was slim to none so we were beyond thrilled.
LEG:
The immediate injury that was obvious was his lower right leg. He had open fractures in three separate places starting from below his knee and going to above the ankle. A metal rod was put in to repair those. In addition to those he had broken off a piece of his knee joint and that was pinned back in place. This created a higher concern about infection because the joint itself was open to the environment for so long. He had also torn 3/4 of his patellar tendon which was repaired. There were also several large lacerations on his leg. I’ve seen photos of his leg while he was still in the trauma bay and laceration does not describe what that looked like. I looked at it and could not even imagine how anyone could even get that skin back together. Lastly there was some bone that just wasn’t there any more because it was lost in the crash so all that was just repaired as best as it could be. He had a great surgeon so we are hopeful even though it was an extensive surgery. He will be non weight bearing on that leg for three months.
Once he was successfully off the vent he was moved out of the ICU. The current status of things is everything is looking good. The more time that passes the further we get from chances of complications and that is the big thing we’re watching out for. Infection will be the big one going forward. We’re not yet sure when he will get out of the hospital or what the next step will be. The only thing we know for sure is that his body is doing a great job so far and that it will be an extremely long and challenging road ahead for his recovery. I’ll post another update when we have the next steps. Jay is just now getting the tiniest glimpse of the support everyone is giving him and is just overwhelmed…..truly. We are beyond appreciative of the incredible amount of help that is being offered. Right now our immediate needs are being more than met by an incredible group of people….we can never thank you guys enough, this is an experience you cannot make it through alone
