This leg of Emily's journey began Sunday when she gave birth to a precious baby girl, Sarah Michal, her 5th child. Emily is the wife of Luke Panter, the pastor of Bridgeview Baptist Church in Quinlen, TX. Emily is also the daughter of Mike & Janis Dietz who live in Albuquerque, NM.
Janis flew to be with Emily after Sarah was born. Late Tuesday afternoon, Janis had prepared dinner for the other 4 children while Emily went to her bedroom to feed Sarah. Janis went to see if Emily wanted something to eat and when she got to Emily's room, she found Emily unconscious in her bed. When Emily came to, she was in extreme pain and they called 911. When the ambulance came, the attendants worked on Emily for 30 minutes to stabalize her so they could get her to the hospital in Greenville. When she got there, they did exploratory surgery to find the source of her pain (thinking maybe her appendix had ruptured) and instead they discovered her body was full of blood. She had already been given 7 units of blood by this time. Greenville knew they couldn't handle her problem, so they airlifted her to Baylor Medical in Dallas.
Upon arrival at Baylor, Emily did code but was resuscitated and 4 surgeons (some of the best in the field) and 10 nurses worked as hard as they could to keep Emily alive. They discovered the right iliac artery had ruptured. They had to graft and repair the artery. The iliac arteries are at the lower end of the aorta where it branches off right and left to carry blood to the legs, but they are in the abdomen. Because she had "coded" they were concerned because her organs were without oxygen for that time. They weren't able to close Emily's wound because her blood wasn't clotting---so they packed the wound and left it open. During this time, they gave Emily blood---the equivalent of 3 times what a body needs.
Emily has been in a drug-induced coma and the doctors were expecting her to be in a coma for about a week because of all of the trauma to her body. But this morning, Janis, her mom, and Kim, her sister-in-law, went in to see her and Emily awakened and didn't understand what was going on and was frustrated because of being on a ventilator. Her blood has started coagulating, which is good...her temperature has risen, which is good...but she still has a small bleed--or seepage because her blood wasn't coagulating properly.
Emily is still in very critical need. Her children are all ok and being taken care of by Luke's mom. So...here are the things to pray for:
*Pray for peace for Emily
*Pray that the doctors will discover the location of this small bleed so they can repair it
*Pray that her blood will continue to coagulate
*Pray that all of her organs will work properly
*Pray that her temperature and blood pressure will be stable
*Pray that God will heal her completely
*Pray for the surgery Emily still faces to fix the small bleed and to close her wound
*Pray for Luke---for peace and comfort
*Pray for her children---they saw the trauma with their mom and the ambulance coming
*Pray for Luke's mom as she takes care of the children
*PRAISE GOD for how He had the best doctors available, for the timing of getting her to the hospital, for the air ambulance, for the available blood (and blood donors)!! We have so much to be thankful for.
We will be updating periodically---so keep checking back! Thank you for praying. We'd love for you to contact your prayer ministry and add Emily to your prayer list. She's still very critical.
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