update from jay

Hello everyone . Jay here. It has been quite an experience for klebsiella bacterial meningitis, septic shock and multiple organ failure caused by an abcess in my liver after an impact to the upper-right quadrant of my torso. I was in an extremely dire situation for many days, and I nearly lost my life
I know you have all been reading Val’s updates for the last 10 days, so I wanted to add a few words of my own.
The outpouring of concern and kindness from everyone (from so many places) has been a major factor in helping my family through the horror of seeing their own on life support systems. Val has been tremendous in her care, and has been bedside throughout. After I woke up, 5 days into the situation, my condition was still extremely critical (I just checked in, to see what condition my condition was in. Yeah, yeah, yeeeeeaaaaaaa…. -- from “The Big Lebowski“). I came too with wrist restraints, a breathing tube, naso-gastric tube, urinary catheter (Van Dine, we now have something else in common), numerous life-support IV drips, and a subclavian catheter directly into my heart. Imagine my mom having to give permission for the doctor to do that. It was necessary for emergency injections of medication to immediately stimulate my heart to keep beating. They dumped over 16 pounds of fluids into my body to sustain blood pressure.
Recovery in the critical care unit has been remarkable they tell me, and the pace fairly rapid. I went from having them monitoring how many ice chips I could sooth my rough, dry throat with to being put on a high calorie and high protein diet in a few days.
Due to the complexity of the situation and the fact that I still cannot sleep more than a few minutes at a time due to the battery of testing and injections and all other related stress, visitation at the hospital from friends remains just not possible. Though I am progressing, I have a very long way to go before being out of the woods on this one. I will get there, and all the doctors and staff attribute my pulling out of a less than 30% chance to being an athlete and in excellent health. They have been excellent and deserve as much or more credit for the job that they performed upon me.
Please keep the positive thoughts and prayers flowing -- they are working. Jay de Jesus

Now I'm up in the air about the CX race tomorrow. Ditch $27 on the pre-reg fee and go mountain biking or spend more money to drive to Jersey to race? Decision decisions!