TRANSPLANT UPDATE 3

FIRST DAY TIMELINE

First of all we want to convey a HUGE THANK YOU to all of you who have been keeping up with us through this whole process. Joseph loves you all very much and if he could right now he would tell you so. 36 people made their way through the doors of Emory yesterday for one purpose: to love on and support Joseph and the family. Along with the 36, there were hundreds if not thousands of people joining us in prayer yesterday from 6 continents including these countries; Afghanistan, Kenya, Australia, Columbia, Honduras, Israel, Korea, Mexico, and the United Kingdom. And that's just the ones we can recall! After Lonnie Mussell (Joseph's father in law) shared this with a friend his friend said “well I have friends in the Southern tip of Chile who can strap a prayer to the back of a penguin and send it across a few miles of ocean to Antarctica to make it all SEVEN continents! (We didn’t do that, but we are crazy enough to LOL!)

Below is a timeline of what took place yesterday:

1:30 am Wednesday morning: Joseph wakes up and doesn't know why he feels so awake (or bright eyed and bushy tailed as he says)

1:45 am Joseph receives the call from Emory to come right away because they have some lungs for him

4:00 am at this point Joseph has been examined and they have determined that everything looks good and the doctor will fly out to get the lungs (we don't know where he had to fly for privacy reasons but we do know that the donor was young, so we need to continue to pray for the donor family as they are mourning the loss of their loved one today)

6:00 am the doctor returns with the lungs and they take Joseph to surgery

8:00 am we get a call saying they are about to begin the surgery

11:00 am, we got an update that they were about to take Joseph’s right lung out and put the new right lung in and they would call us with an update before starting the left one

1:00 pm, we got the update that the right lung was in and working great. They would now start on the left lung

2:00 pm, just an hour later we get the call that BOTH lungs are in and working fine. They will continue to monitor him a while and then sew him up and take him to ICU after

2:45 pm, they let us know they were closing him up and the doctor would come to speak with us after they finish and transfer Joseph to the ICU

4:30 pm, The doctor came to speak with us and he said that he felt very positive about everything but wanted to monitor the inflammation and watch for any excess bleeding. They had to put Joseph on a heart-lung bypass machine for 4 hours which caused the lungs to become inflamed.

5:45pm The Doctor decided to take Joseph back to the O.R. due to excessive bleeding. His blood wouldn’t clot and the lungs continued to swell and ooze blood. They had to re-open, drain, stitch, and clean. He was also given countless units of blood.

9:00 pm, the doctor came to speak to us and said that the 2nd surgery went well and the blood was clotting much better and his oxygenation levels were even better than before. So everything was looking great!

1:30am ICU called and said Joseph was waking up. Kayse (wife), Sherry (mom), Adrianne (sister), and Nadine (Grandmother) rushed down from the waiting room to see him. He could not open his eyes but was defiantly aware of their presence. The doctor asked him to move his feet and he did!!!! This was very exciting. His sister asked him to lift his eyebrows and he did!!! The ladies continued to talk to him and tell him of all the prayers and people who came to visit. While holding Joseph’s hand, Sherry (mom) said, “Baby, I love you” Joseph was able to lightly squeeze her hand 3 times, which is code for I love you too!

7:30am Dr. says he is recovering well and they lowered his ventilator to provide 30% oxygen (it was once at 100%). Normal room air provides 21% oxygen so they want to get him down to that amount. They tell the family that they are keeping him very sedated for the rest of the day to allow his body to recover from all of the trauma.

Stay tuned for more updates…