It had been a long day. I knew Sam was struggling with low oxygen saturation levels but he did not want to go to the doctors. I was on the phone with Kaiser multiple times and they insisted that he needed to be seen in person. When Sarah got off work, she listened to her dad’s lungs and told him, “We have to go to the emergency room. Your lungs never sound good. Now they sound terrible.” He reluctantly agreed.

Sammy met her there and I went to bed worried and exhausted. I soon heard that Sam was admitted with a white blood cell count twice as high and normal. Infection. Maybe.

In all Sam was in the hospital for 11 days. Two moments stick out to me. The first was near the end of visiting hours. Sarah, Sammy and I were about to go home. Then we started talking about Sam’s speech. It was slurred. I had noticed it in the afternoon and alerted the physical therapist who was working with him.
“He is not usually like this,” I said.
She stopped what she was doing and did a quick stroke assessment. Then said, “Maybe it is the anxiety medication they have him on.” I thanked her for allaying my fears.

Sammy and Sarah had not been with us at the time, but now, five hours later, we realized that Sam had declined further. He could no longer say his name. Just Stalll . . . with no “cup.”
”He was on anxiety medication yesterday,” Sarah remembered. “And he was not like this. We should call the hospitalist.”
We asked the nurse to see the hospitalist.
“He is very busy,” she said.
“We know. We’d still like to see him.” We responded.
Then Sammy said something that galvanized the three of us: “I don’t think any of us should leave until we have answers.” We all agreed though it was past my bedtime.

About 30 minutes later the hospitalist came to see us. We explained our view: Sam had declined significantly during the afternnon and evening. He had been on anxiety medication yesterday. We thought something else was going on. We were polite but firm. He listened to us, then ordered tests. I asked, “When will the first tests results come?” I knew it could take hours. I also knew that if I went home and went to bed I would wake up at two in the morning wondering what had happened during the night. I had no idea that Sam was in grave danger.

Then the hospitalist said something that endeared him to me. “I will be up all night. Call me and I will give you test results. Here is my card, use the mobile phone number.”

As it played out, we learned that Sam’s CO2 levels were so high . . . from not exhaling sufficiently. CO2 was filling his lungs making it hard for his blood to exchange CO2 for oxygen. To get rid of the CO2 they had to put him on a BiPAP or a ventilator—a machine that would breathe for him. This meant moving him to ICU.

The next morning the new hospitalist told Sam, “You were all the way to the edge, but you pulled back.” He was saying, you nearly died. In moments like this there are so many statements one could make. If we had not noticed he was declining throughout the afternoon and early evening. If we had not remembered that he had been on anxiety medicine before without this effect. If the hospitalist had not tested the CO2 levels in his blood . . . he would have died.

But we know that God was with us! He protected Sam. He took care of us. Sam improved so much on the BiPAP that he came home on April 1, 2024. We are doing rehab at home. He has bed exercises, chair exercises. He walks about 100 steps with a walker and one of us behind him. It is a lot of work but he is getting stronger day by day.

Thank you for your prayers for us!

Love,
Betsy

Where Healing Flows

God Saves Sam!