Monday Evening Update

John "Jay" Denison was admitted to the ICU at Arcadia Methodist Hospital on Friday evening (May 1) with a serious infection in his body. We were told to expect that he would be in the hospital for a few days to treat the infection with IV antibiotics.

About 2:30am Saturday morning, his condition collapsed and he went into cardiac arrest twice, as the overwhelming infection was attacking his entire body. If he were not otherwise healthy and relatively young (51) he would not have made it back at this point. He is heavily sedated and on a ventilator. His liver and kidneys shut down and his heart has been seriously damaged, but it is doing the job right now. His brain was probably oxygen deprived when he suffered the cardiac arrests. The extent of that is unknown, but there’s a couple of positive indicators in that when they reduced his sedation he does respond to pain and occasionally moves his body with intentional movements.

Currently, it is very critical that they get his kidneys and liver working again so that he will have a chance at surviving. If they are unable to get his organs working again, there is not much else they can do for him.

Sunday night they brought in the best vascular surgeon in Southern California to insert a catheter to start dialysis. Dialysis is necessary to clean the toxins out of his blood which will set the stage for his liver and kidneys to hopefully restart. The procedure was quite dangerous because his blood is very thin and he could have bled out. The procedure took an hour (though it normally takes 5 minutes) but it was successful and he has been on dialysis since late Sunday night. It will be another day or so until they will see any signs if the dialysis is working or not. There is nothing they can do to "jump start" the kidneys and liver. They have to restart on their own.

Please pray specifically that the dialysis will work and get his kidneys and liver functioning again.

We ask that you please not call the ICU at the hospital for updates on Jay. They are only able to give out information to immediate family and answering calls pulls the nursing staff away from Jay's care. Please check this website for updates as often as you can. You can also call for a recorded update at 714-693-1623.

They are asking that we keep visitors to a minimum right now as his current condition is requiring that all of his energy go towards his body fighting off the infection. His vitals seem to react slightly when people are in the room with him, and we need to conserve that energy as much as possible. We will let you know when we can have more visitors come to see him. We have family at the hospital around the clock so feel free to come by, just know that getting in to actually see Jay is not the best thing for him at this point.

Thanks again for your love and prayers. It is such an amazing comfort that people all over the world are praying for Jay. It is an awesome expression of the faith of God’s people in prayer, people’s love for Jay, and other people’s willingness to pray for someone they don’t know half a world away.

Please leave your name and a comment or prayer for Jay on this blog. We would love to see them and pass them along to Jay.