Kenneth Arquette, Jr.

Tribute

Ken and I got married January 5, 2015, two years after we met. On March 3, 2015, he went to the emergency room at St. Anne’s Hospital in Toledo, Ohio, and was admitted for severe abdominal pain. He was running a fever. He was already scheduled to have colon resection surgery on March 12 for acute diverticulitis. The doctor performed the surgery on March 7.

Ken did well initially but several days later he started experiencing excruciating pain and said he felt like his insides were ripping apart. Ken underwent a second surgery on March 11 and the doctor performed an ileostomy, but couldn’t figure out where his intestines were leaking. (Sepsis and Perforated Bowel) He also inserted an abdominal drain. The following day, Ken went into septic shock. I got a call that morning from a nurse who told me that Ken was being transferred to ICU because he had low urine output and increased heart rate, and I should get there as soon as I could.

When I got there, Ken was very confused and pale and sweating profusely. I didn’t know it yet, but his kidneys and lungs were starting to fail. The ICU nurse started administering antibiotics and fluids and told me Ken was in septic shock and I had to start making medical decisions for him. I was in shock myself, trying to absorb what was happening, because I didn’t know anything about sepsis. Ken had to have a central line inserted on the right side of his neck and a dialysis port inserted on the left side of his neck.

Over the course of the next several days, he had three dialysis treatments and ended up being put on a ventilator and placed into a medically induced coma. He had tubes coming out of practically every part of his body. Over the next month, he did manage to recover and get off the ventilator but then one day his ileostomy bag exploded and was full of blood so the gastro doctor performed an endoscopy and discovered Ken had a huge bleeding duodenal ulcer which he treated. The doctors had a hard time getting rid of Ken’s abdominal infection and performed several procedures to drain the abdominal abscess. Ken also acquired pneumonia while he was in the hospital, which the doctors also had a hard time treating. None of the antibiotics seemed to work.

The number of doctors and nurses that were treating Ken, the amount of drugs he was being given, and the number of x-rays and other tests that were being done on him on a daily basis was staggering. Then Ken ended up with a blood clot in one of his legs because he had been lying in bed for a month so the doctors started giving him blood thinners. The turning point was when Ken went septic a second time in April and then experienced a hypoxic event. The nurses were not surprised that Ken was going septic again but I couldn’t believe it. I wanted so badly for him to get better and get out of the hospital. But he was never the same after that, because his brain was without oxygen for 7 minutes. He also had to be put back on the ventilator. He had trouble weaning off the ventilator this time and ended up having to have a tracheostomy and a feeding tube inserted. He also had a bout of pancreatitis.

After 10 weeks at St. Anne’s, Ken was transferred to a long term acute care (LTAC) hospital for critically ill patients. He spent 6 weeks there getting weaned off the ventilator and he had his trach tube removed. While he was there, he had pneumonia, a blood clot in his right arm and a urinary tract infection. He left there and went to a skilled nursing/rehab facility close to our home but was only there for a week before I had to transfer him to Toledo Hospital ER where they diagnosed him with pneumonia and a MRSA infection. Again, Ken had to be put back on a ventilator, and then had another tracheostomy. I was beside myself because I knew what that meant.

Three weeks later, Ken had to go back to the LTAC hospital and spent another 6 weeks there trying to wean off the ventilator. During that time, Ken became severely depressed, having spent 6 months in hospitals at this point and he would make comments that he wanted to die. He couldn’t get out of bed, in fact, he could barely move his body, he couldn’t eat or drink, he couldn’t see clearly, he was in frequent pain because of his bad back and bad knees, which were made worse from lying in bed all the time, he had bedsores and he had terrible episodes of anxiety. He cried every day. Ken started to go septic for the third time during his second stay at the LTAC hospital, but the nurse followed the sepsis criteria and started treating Ken immediately and prevented him from going into septic shock. When he left there in September to go to a different skilled nursing facility, he could tolerate being off the ventilator during the day but was still on it at night.

Ken spent 5 months at the skilled nursing facility and they did manage to wean him off the ventilator after about 3 months but he did not progress in physical therapy. He also contracted pneumonia, MRSA and a urinary tract infection during his time there. He did have the trach removed before I brought him home on February 15. Nurses, aides, and therapists came to our apartment to take care of him and I took care of his feeding tube, his ileostomy bag and his catheter. The first week he was home he contracted another urinary tract infection. The second week, he went septic for the fourth time. (Sepsis and Urinary Tract Infection) It happened very quickly.

I sent him to the hospital and told the doctor in tears that Ken wanted to die, and had been telling me that every day he was home, so the doctor did a DNR and for two days I watched him slowly die then he passed away on February 28, 2016. He was 43 years old. He had spent an entire year fighting for his life and he just couldn’t take any more and his kidneys and lungs shut down for the last time. He suffered so much pain and misery during the last year of his life, I am glad he is at peace now.

Source: Holly Arquette, wife

Send us Your Story
Learn More about SepsisSupport Faces of Sepsis