When we last saw Mark & Lisa they were saying what might have been their last goodbyes(spoiler alert: it wasn’t).
After creating a video of Mark telling his girls that he was going into a coma to try to save his life, we talked for a few more minutes waiting for a doctor to come in. The team came in and everything moved very quickly from there.
We stayed on the phone while they transported him to the critical care ICU. He was so brave. We waited until the last possible moment to hang up the phone. One of the doctors informed us they were about to get started and a nurse assured me they would charge his phone for when he woke up. She seemed confident that he would wake up.
The doctor told me Mark would be in a medically induced coma for around two weeks, I could call to check on him at any time, and could schedule phone calls with the chaplain so he could hear our voices while he was under or after he woke up. I let family and social media land know, and went on to start what I assumed would be the longest two weeks of my life.
We trudged through school drop offs, work, and day to day activities trying to manage the anxiety as best we could. Every moment felt as though I enveloped in a field of static electricity, like I was vibrating. Hovering by the phone waiting for news, while trying to not make the nurses crazy.
Even the dog was a mess. He would just sit next to Mark’s side of the bed and stare at me. I finally gave him Mark’s pillowcase and he seemed to calm down.
Of course we maintained our sense of humor. We get through all of these challenges with laughter. Kelley started sending us the updated patient list and I started making funny videos for him detailing how bad at life I was without him.
Of course, Mark Pendlebury won’t do anything according to the script. Nope, not him. On day 5 I received a call that he had made significant improvements during the night and was doing far more breathing on his own than expected. The team had decided to try to gently start waking him up. And they succeeded.
The chaplain called to start a video call the same afternoon.
We all sat in excitement while the call loaded and there he was! He was still intubated, but waking up! He was signing “I love you” and smiling behind the tubes.
It was one of the top 3 days of my life. Honestly, that day mountains over even my wedding day.
I love that man and he was coming home to us!
Waking up was just the beginning. Mark had a long road to recovery. Even just being comatose 5 days, he had to relearn to walk, feed himself, and even breathe normally again.
Mark came home from the hospital on oxygen and not completely out of the woods. He was out of work 5 more months after he came out of the coma, and even then it was a slow return to yet another new normal.
When he was in the coma his kidney function seemed to recover from the acute kidney injury and his labs returned to mostly normal. The kidney numbers never completely returned to baseline, but it seemed he had mostly recovered!
Over the next two years he stayed mostly stable with mild decreases in function. Knowing he had lost some function we knew he’d not have quite as much time with the kidney as we had originally hoped, but I don’t think we would have ever guessed it would come as quick as it did.
My husband is one of the hardest working men I have ever known. Very little causes him to be willing to miss work or take time off. When the air conditioning where he worked stopped working, Mark just kept going. He was doing everything he was capable of to provide for his family. Transplant patients should not get dehydrated and there was no way he could keep up with drinking enough water. Unfortunately, his renal function declined fairly quickly with the intense heat on top of his kidney already being slightly compromised.
And that Fam, is How We Got Here.
Stay tuned for more exciting adventures as we continue to grow into another new normal.
One response to “How Did We Get Here? {Part 2}”
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We are praying! If we can do anything in addition please let us know! We love you guys!
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Mark's Fourth Kidney 
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