UPDATE.....

Thank you to everyone who has expressed their concern for Mark and offered prayers in his behalf. In an effort to keep family and friends informed as to his condition/recovery as I will most likely be away from the phone and computer the next little while, I will try to give a short synopsis of the recent happenings. Mark has always had a little problem with food getting stuck in his esophagus. It started when he was about 8 or 9 years old. Usually he would take a drink or lie down and the food would just go down. As he has gotten older, it has been more difficult for the food to go down. Thankfully, this doesn't happen on a regular basis, but I have been concerned about it and asked doctors over the years what we could do to help/prevent/stop this from happening. They always just told me, that at some point, he would need to have his espohagus stretched. Anyway, about 4 days ago, he felt like he had food caught again. This time, however, it didn't seem to budge. By Saturday afternoon, he was in so much pain that I took him to the ER. The doctor there (after giving me a huge and very unkind lecture about how I should have had this taken care of years ago...) gave him some medicine through an IV to relax the soft tissue muscles in his body and allow the blockage to clear. He was so dehydrated that they had to try three different times to get an IV going. Mark had a reaction to the medication and his body temperature spiked and he began to hyperventilate. And to make matters worse, it did not clear the blockage. She told us that there were no GI doctors on call that night so we would just have to wait it out until Monday. The ER doctor sent us home (after a fun-filled 6 hour experience) with some medication that was to relax his muscles and try to get whatever it was blocking his esophagus to move. He had a miserable day on Sunday, not being able to eat or drink anything for the second day. He would take little sips of water with his medicine, but it would also get stuck and after about 3 sips, began to back up on him. The medicine gave him diarrhea so bad that before too long he was so dehydrated that he was shaking and cold. He was in so much pain that he was just miserable. This morning I called the gastrointerologist to try and get him in as soon as I could. Our appointment was at 2PM. By the time we got there, Mark was hardly able to stand. He could not even swallow his own saliva. They got him hooked up to an IV which was able to hydrate him. By the end of our 2 hour stay there we found out that the medicine he received from the ER doctor was the wrong stuff and only making him worse. The specialist also informed us that she was on call that night and received several calls from the ER. She also said that they could have scoped him then and there. (I was pretty upset!) Mark is scheduled to have a scope done tomorrow morning. We are anxious to find out what his diagnoses will be so we can get him feeling better soon. I will be sure to have another update for you as soon as we know anything. We are praying that this will not hinder his desire or ability to serve a mission. Thank you again for all of your well wishes, concern and your prayers. We appreciate it very much.