After 5 sinus debridement the doctors at the University of Utah hospital diagnosed the fungus as mucormycosis. It is very rare and aggressive. No one has lived with this fungus. After the 5 sinus surgery's we were getting ready to go home. Dr. Hunt came for a check up with some students and found out Bill had a bacterial infection (Jan. 26th). Dr. Hunt decided to do one more sinus clean out (Jan. 28th) before we went home and found that the fungal infection had started to eat the bone in Bill's face. He went back into surgery (Feb. 1st) and the doctors removed his top jaw and the cheek bone on the left side of his face. He has a trach tube and a G-tube to eat with. One more MRI was done and they found that the fungus was still growing. They doctors told us that there was nothing more they could do and they were going to send us home to make Bill comfortable until he passed away. Within 30 to 45 minutes, they came back and asked if we would like to try hyperbaric chamber treatments, to see if it would stop the fungus. Mucormycosis does not like oxygen. Of course we said yes, so we were sent to LDS hospital (Feb. 9th). Bill's dad passed away this same day at 6:40 am. I didn't tell Bill about it until Saturday the 11th, when the kids came up to the hospital.  

I had to go back to work on Monday, Feb. 21st. I was so sad to leave Bill alone at the hospital, but the nurses took really good care of him and I drove up every weekend until April 20th. After I had to come back to St. George the hyperbaric chamber treatments were harder for Bill deal with. He had to take anxiety and depression medicine.

 We better start at the very beginning: On December 21, 2011, Bill had complained of his lips feeling swollen and sinus pain on the left side of his face. I didn't see the swelling on his lips, so I just gave him sinus and pain medicine.

December 22, 2011 - Bill's left eye is swelling a bit, so we went to Dr. Christian's office. He still has sinus pain and so the doctor gave us meds for the sinuses. Bill also said that his cheek is numb along with his lips.

Monday, December 23rd - Up very early because Bill is in more pain than he can handle. We go to the emergency room. After a CAT scan it looks like his sinuses are dark and that there is an abscess by a tooth on the right side (the tooth was never the problem even though the ER doctor felt is was). Bill is given different meds for his sinuses and pain.

Saturday, December 24, 2011, Bill's eye is more swollen, along with his lips and almost all of the left side of his face is numb.

Christmas - Bill watches us open our Christmas gifts and opens some of his, but he is in a lot of pain and the sinus and pain meds don't seem to be working.

We can't get into see Dr. Christian until the 26th and as soon as he sees Bill, he refers us to Dr. Doxey and we walk right over to his office. As soon as Dr. Doxey sees Bill, he is sent to the hospital

While in the hospital all the symptoms seem to be an abscess on the tooth and sinus infections. The Infectious Disease doctor at the hospital says that the numbness on Bill's left side of his face is odd and not normal for sinus infections, so Dr. Doxey decided to do a sinus clean out, which is normal for a bad sinus infection on December 30th.

Dr. Doxey found that the tooth was not involved in the pain or swelling on Bill's face, it's a fungal infection and they feel that he needs to be in a hospital in Salt Lake. We were going to IHC in Murray. (refer to the first posts made on this site - then come back to January 4th for a more consistent reading of Bill's story)
 
January 4, 2012 - Bill is at the University of Utah hospital in the Neuro ICU. The doctors - Infectious Disease, ENT(Ear/Nose/Throat), Respiratory, and others are deciding what they need to do for Bill and they are trying to decide what kind of fungus it is. The main doctor is Jason P. Hunt and he spends half his time at the Huntsman Cancer hospital doing surgery on ear/nose/throat cancer patients. Bill will stay in ICU for just a few days.

On December 26th Bill was in Dixie Regional Hospital with what the doctors thought was a really bad sinus infection. The infectious disease doctor felt that the numbness in Bill's face was odd and as he talked with Dr. Doxey they decided to clean out his sinuses. After the procedure (Dec. 30th), we were told that Bill had a fungal infection and they were sending us to IHC hospital  in Murray. This was January 3rd and I had a presentation to do at school. When I came back from school, I found out that he was going to the University of Utah by ambulance instead. They put a pick line in his right arm and started him on a very powerful medicine that looks like Sunny D juice drink. It was called Amphotericin. He left St. George at about 5:00 pm. I left early the next morning.

The Black family has had a roller coaster adventure for the past 14 weeks and it will continue for many more weeks before normal activity will happen.
It began on the 22nd of December with Bill complaining about his lips filling swollen and numb. Then pain in his sinus area just wouldn't go away with pain reliever.