Dad still wasn't doing too well today. The level of infection is so high that the antibiotics aren't really able to cope with it. When we arrived at the hospital this afternoon, the nurse told us that the doctor would probably want to speak with us. You can imagine the sinking feeling in our chests as we waited to hear the news. Were they going to tell us that they couldn't do any more to help Dad fight the infection?
In fact, when the surgeon came to speak with us, he told us that they aren't giving up the fight yet. As long as there is still a chance that Dad could pull through, they're going to do everything possible to help him fight and overcome the infection. Tomorrow morning, they're going to take him back into surgery to clean out all the infected gunk in his abdominal cavity, so that hopefully this will give his organs a better chance to recover and start working again. He's breathing a little (with help from the ventilator) but there's so much infection that his stomach and his kidneys aren't able to work for themselves yet.
Doctors say they wouldn't do this surgery (putting him through his third operation in ten days) if they didn't think it could give him a better chance to recover. But they were honest in telling us that they wouldn't keep putting him through procedures if things came to a stage where they felt that he wasn't able to make it. But it's not at that stage yet, and so they feel that "cleaning out" the infected fluid is the best next step to give him a chance of beginning to improve again - as he was doing at the beginning of this week. He'll go in for the operation at around 9 am tomorrow (Friday) morning. Thanks for your prayers.
