Marshall Jones’ MRSA Story

Somewhere around midnight, Marshall began vomiting. At this point, I started looking on the internet for his problem, because we have (finally) ruled out normal back pain. And I have finally been convinced that he really does have a problem. He has big lumps of bunched up muscles at the small of his back, on both sides of his spine. I can be so hard headed sometimes. Ugh.

The best I could come up with was kidney stones, and we thought it was a pretty good diagnosis. I asked Marshall if he wanted to go to the Emergency Room, but he didn’t want to yet. He didn’t want to get the children up in the middle of the night if he didnt have to, because they had school (they are 7 and 10). I fell back asleep around 2 am, he was still up, sick as a dog. He hasnt had a decent bit of sleep since Saturday night.

About 5am, Marshall woke me up and told me to call an ambulance, that he didn’t want me to have to get the kids up, but I got right up, got the kids, and we were on the road in no time. I am sure it was just as fast as waiting on an ambulance would have been. As if I am going to stay here with sleeping kids while my husband goes into the ER!

When we got into the ER, Marshall told the man at the desk that he thought his kidneys were shutting down, and they got him right into triage, without the normal several hour wait in the ER waiting room. In triage, they asked him questions, weighed him (235lbs), showed him this ridiculous pain scale with smiley faces to try to get him to tell them how much pain he was in, took some blood, and his temperature. His temp was 104. They put him in a room in the ER, and pretty quickly came in with some insulin, as his blood sugar was 311, and they said he was diabetic. This was a first for us. Marshall had been told before that his sugar was a little on the high side, but never had he been told he had diabetes. Looking back, we should have known. His mothers side of the family is full of diabetes, and he has had alot of symptoms during the last year. Dr. Daftarian was consulted, and Marshall was given some vicodin for his pain, but not too much, as they did not want to mask his pain until they knew what the problem was. Dr. Daftarian ordered an Xray and a CAT scan, which was done in the next couple of hours. I took the kids over to my father in law’s house, and he took them to school for me.

After several hours, Dr. Daftarian admitted him to the hospital, room 243, in the general medical unit. Dr. D came in around noon to see Marshall. We told her about our thinking that it was a kidney stone. We asked about appendicitis, and because Marshall’s infection on his neck was the first time we had seen Dr. Daftarian, we reminded her of that, and told her that it had healed up beautifully. Marshall was still nauseous, we wondered if that could be a vicodin reaction. Dr. Daftarian started Marshall on IV antibiotics at this point, and again, I failed to note which one it was (for the last time!).

I left the hospital to meet the school bus, and to make plans for the children for the night. The Sandels took them for the night, and got them to school for me the next morning.

Marshalls friend from work, Lanny, stopped by. They are real estate agents at Century 21. Lanny said that already, one of the agents had said, “Oh, Marshall is sick? Who is doing his business?” GOOD GRIEF. This is just the beginning of us learning how the true nature of some people comes out at times like this.

Marshall did not get a bit of sleep this night either. He is going on about 3 days with no sleep, and only had short bits of sleep the 2 days prior to this.

Pain Scale- 10+/10