WebWalker's Blog

It's scary. Dad's white cell count has gone down but a new xray shows congestion in the lungs and his heart beat continues with an abnormal p-rate. There is no bowel or renal function at all, so he will be on permanent dialysis. There is another dialysis session scheduled for him in one hour from now. He's quite swollen now because of the zero output. He is not responding or rousing at this point but he is also on lots of morphine and versed to combat the pain. The doctors have asked mom (Emily) to talk to him a lot to let him know he is surrounded by love and give him encouragement, so she has been telling him about his beloved roses which line the front walk in front of their house, while his children wait in the ICU waiting room. Thank you all for your prayers. I tried to telephone Rick to see how Aunt Edith is doing but got his answering machine. I know he spent all night last night in the ICU with her; hopefully he is at home catching an hour or so of sleep now. Ou...

April 4 - Carrie Rae (Tate) Powell April 13 - Loni Tate April 14 - Jason Whetstone April 29 - Sherry and Vernon Whetstone (39 years together!) April 30 - Timothy Ariel Whetstone

The ICU department would not allow us to stay all night with Dad, so everyone went home to attempt a bit of sleep. Dad's fibrillations had seemed to stabilize out but he is still in renal failure and is fighting an infection. The docs still do not know the origin of the infection. He is still on the breathing machine. The plan was to attempt dialysis and see if he would be able to tolerate it. It is now nearly 3 am and I just spoke to the ICU nurses. They just finished the dialysis procedure. It was not as long a run as is ultimately needed and they were not able to take off as much fluid as desired, but it was a good first run and he did tolerate it. They have added some meds to bring his blood pressure up, and that seems to be working incrementally. He roused when they called out to him and was responsive so that was good. Now they will let him sleep again and we'll see what the morning brings. I must mention that just before Dad went in to surgery, he was so surrounded in lo...

I talked to Rick at about 9pm Thursday; he is remaining at the ICU in KC with his mom. He told me, "She'll wake up for a few moments at a time, signal yes or no to me by a nod of her head, and tears well up in her eyes. I can't bear the thought of her being alone in this. Every time she wakes up, I want her to be able to see my face and know I am near." God blessed you with a wonderful son, Auntie. Rick also reports that there are 'baby steps' of improvement, too. Edith's heart rate actually caught up with the pacemaker, all on its own. So that is wonderful news and we thank God for it. Keep those prayers coming.

02:30 am -- Re Aunt Edith: Rick was called back to the hospital about 2:30 am Kansas time because Aunt Edith had to be taken back into surgery. Long story short, her heart was not beating well on its own so they now have a machine helping the heart to pump. She is also still on the respirator (breathing machine), and there are concerns about possible renal failure. Rick and all of us who love her send thanks to everyone for your prayers. Please keep it up, and pray for Rick too. We will of course post more info as soon as we possibly can. 10:30 am -- Re Tom Tate: Mom (Emily) has remained at Dad's side every moment that the ICU staff will allow it, along with at least one of us 'kids.' Dad is still on the respirator, not breathing on his own, and he is now fighting a infection from an unknown area. They are trying to identify where the infection is coming from (they suspect it may be from the acidosis) and are currently prepping him for a CT scan to identify if the bowels ha...

At the same time that DadTate is in the hospital in Arizona, there is another drama unfolding in Missouri. Please keep Aunt Edith Tate-Hern in your prayers; she is undergoing open heart bypass surgery as I write this post. Rick took her to Providence Hospital initially for pneumonia and three blood clots in her legs which had not responded to treatment. The doctors were planning on removing the clots surgically. But then, in the hospital she suffered a heart attack. And then she went in to renal failure, necessitating a delay in obtaining a heart catheterization until they got that stabilized. The angiogram revealed that she needed a three-way bypass surgery. Two arteries were 99% blocked and one was 100% blocked, completely closed off. She did not want the surgery but then today she suffered another heart attack and consented to do the bypass surgery. They immediately prepped her and took her in to the O.R. on an emergency basis. When I last spoke to Rick they had just taken her off t...

DadTate (Tom) had open heart surgery on March 28th. Long story short (or at least shortER), they replaced his coronary valve with a tissue (bovine) heart valve. They had also planned to do an additional bypass surgery but the artery was too narrow; to try and put a stent in would have caused it to completely collapse. Surgery was completed at approximately 3 pm yesterday (the 28th) but I have not been near a computer till now. He is in ICU at Mesa General Hospital. It's been a roller-coaster ride since surgery was finished, and it will be so for another day or so at least, then he should stabilize. We expect he will be in ICU for several more days and then will be transferred to the telemetry unit for another week or so. The biggest problems so far have been renal failure and fibrillations. Also they cannot get him off the respirator (breathing machine) yet. The doctor wanted him off it by late last night but so far he has been unable to breathe on his own. He has developed a...

From: Ariel Whetstone Hi. Take A look at our latest family pic’s. Enjoy, Ariel Whetstone Family - Israel March2006 Click on the link below to view the entire photo album! http://community.webshots.com/album/548745551lSnEHj

I got so wound up in my last post I forgot why I started to make a post in the first place... to let ya'll know when folks are arriving. Here's the schedule as we know it today: (provided of course the good doctor doesn't rearrange things again!) Sherry has already arrived and is staying at Tom/Emily's. She can stay till the 31st of March. Robin will arrive on Sunday March 26 and will stay till April 4. Robin will also stay at Mom/Dad's. Tommy ... (info deleted at his request) David should be back from NC (Scott's wedding) tomorrow. And I am here, like the moss you can't scrape off the side of a tree. We've received an abundance of phone calls and emails from folks sending Dad good wishes. His brother Richard called him, nephew Rick also telephoned and emailed, Mary Borrelli, Edith Hern, RickeyLynn, and more have called. Emails have arrived from the Roots, Gans, Mary Wroten, and so many more I can't list them all here. You know who you are, and I wan...

UPDATE : New date for Tom's (Dad's) surgery. Now it's scheduled for 05:30 on Tuesday, March 28th. Why? Because the surgeon decided to go out of town and won't be back till Monday. No explanation. No excuses. Just gone. Doesn't matter that Sherry has already traveled 10,000 miles at a cost of over a thousand dollars to get here in time for Dad's surgery. Doesn't matter that Robin had to pay for another ticket to be here for the new dates needed. Doesn't matter how many people's work schedules and lives have to be rearranged, and it doesn't matter that Dad himself has been sitting on pins and needles waiting for this surgery to happen. The doc wanted to go skiing, or golfing, or who knows what? He doesn't even consider us worthy of telling why he decided to reschedule Dad's surgery. He probably charged the trip, and will use the money he makes doing Dad's surgery to pay for it -- on the rescheduled date, at HIS convenience, of course. A...

Congratulations Scott and Rachel! Today marks the beginning of a new life for Scott and Rachel Tate. They were married today in Jacksonville, North Carolina, in the presence of family and friends. No word yet as to how the nuptuals were carried out, but I am sure that will be coming soon! In the meantime, all good luck and congratulations to both Scott and Rachel; may you have many long and happy years together!

Melonie Schollmeyer has graciously offered her house for out-of-towners to stay during Dad's hospitalization. She lives in Scottsdale so it's closer than the west side for access to the hospital. Plus it's nicer to stay with relatives than a hotel! Anyone needing a place to crash just call Melonie - let me know if you need her telephone number. And thank you, Melonie for your generosity!

The surgeon's office just verified that they will be doing a single vessel bypass and an aortic valve replacement on Dad's heart March 24th. The single vessel bypass will be in addition to the quadruple bypass he had two years ago... Check in time will be 06:30 am on March 24th with the surgery scheduled for 08:30 am. Dad requests no hospital visitors other than his wife and children, due to the high risk of infection after the surgery. But prayers and cards will be most welcome, and phone calls too after about a week. Thanks again to everyone for your love and support during this stressful time. I love you all.

First of all, THANK YOU to everyone who donated to bring Sherry to town for DadTate's upcoming surgery. June Tate, David Whetstone, Rickey Gans, Dave Tate, and Susan Walker have already sent in their money to help make this happen. Robin Dion and Tommy Tate have also pledged to donate. God bless you all, it means so much to Dad to have ALL his children here as he enters into this ordeal. Looks like DadTate will go into Mesa General Hospital on March 24 for the open heart surgery. He will be in intensive care after the operation for about a week, then probably another week or two on the telemetry ward, and then he will be able to go home. There is a 15% chance he may not survive the surgery, so we didn't schedule the surgery till the 24th so all the kids could arrange to be here. (That's why we took up the collection as mentioned above to bring Sherry over from Israel.) I know 15% sounds like a high risk, but there is a 40% chance he won't survive more than a couple of m...

We met with Dad's surgeon *finally* today... 'we' being Tom, Emily, Susan, and David. Long story short, it looks like surgery may be as early as next Thursday or Friday. It's a long and complicated story but it's after midnight now and I am exhausted, so I'll write briefly here and then post more later. It boils down to this: if Dad undergoes the surgery, he has a 15% chance of not surviving it. If he does not undergo the surgery, he has a 40% chance that he will die from his condition in the very near future. He might survive as long as two years, but they have not heard of anyone surviving longer than that with this condition (aortic stenosis) because the more months go by the worse the stenosis becomes until the valve is completely blocked, and then survival rate is zero. Right now the valve is open only 0.8 centimeter; at 0.5 they consider you have days to live. They went over every risk carefully, in full detail. Some of the biggest risks entailed: Post sur...

March 04 - Robin Dion's birthday March 04 - Emily Tate's birthday March 15 - Tracy and Brent Weston's anniversary (1997) March 21 - Bethany (Thomas) Rohde's birthday