03/08/2025
This is what happened:
Doris and Debbie traveled to visit sister/aunt Joyce Chong in Hawaii last week. It was a great trip and all was well until the last day of the trip Saturday March 1. They went to one of Doris’s most favorite locations here in Hawaii called Hanauma Bay Nature Reserve. They were barely getting started on the snorkeling and Doris had an accident in the water taking in water and eventually found unconscious face down in the water. Joyce grabbed her and yelled for help and fortunately there were many qualified people there that day who began to perform CPR. She was resuscitated 3 times and transported to the closest hospital. Once in the hospital the nurses and doctors worked to treat her for the low blood pressure and other resulting injuries from the incident. They discovered she had 9 broken ribs, seawater in her lungs and some other damage to be determined. She began getting treated for those things with the intent on coming home after a few days in rehab. That unfortunately didn’t happen. She has a hemotoma on her aorta, retaining lots of fluid, difficulty breathing, coughing spells and general pain. Because of these things and the hematoma on the aorta the doctors want to do surgery to repair the damage so it doesn’t rupture. She had to get a CT with contrast of the heart in order for the surgeon to have the best, most up to date condition of the heart. This was very difficult to perform the CT scan because it requires laying down and she couldn’t breathe when laying down. Fortunately, this did get completed late Thursday night. Today she had a thoracentesis medical procedure which is removing the fluid from the pleural space, the area between the lungs and chest wall. Normal fluid amount is 5 cc’s but they removed 500 cc’s of blood from the left lung. The surgery is now scheduled for 1:00 on Saturday. Currently, her vitals are normal, she’s sitting up and talking, she’s awake and in good spirits.
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