Mista Lee Means aka Soldier Boy!

Hey everybody, A lot of you probably do not know me. My name is Ben Henson and I've considered Lee one of my best friends for many many years now. Not only is Lee my friend but he is also one of my main climbing partners and for you climbers reading this, you know the type of bond that is developed over years of amazing climbing adventures together.

I know theres a lot of you wondering what in the hell is going on with our great friend Lee. I cannot log on Facebook at work, so I'll do my best to keep everyone updated on this blog as I get more info from his mom and from Julie.

WHAT HAPPENED: (I'm no doctor this is the information I got from Irene-Lee's mom)

Several days ago Lee began feeling sick.  He had a tightness in his chest and was running a fever. He assumed he was coming down with Pneumonia. Like any straight G would do he pretty much shrugged it off and figured he'd get better in a few days,(something most of us have done a million times) but instead of getting better he continued getting worse. Finally Julie stepped in and convinced Lee to go to the hospital (thank God for Julie) in which the doctors decided to run some last minutes checks which included an EKG. Irene said the docs were blown away by what they discovered. Lee had some sort of infection to develop in his heart muscle otherwise known as Myocardidtis. This was causing Lee's heart muscle to barely pump blood into his body. They rushed him into surgery and placed a balloon in his heart to help it pump blood. This worked but the Balloon has an expiration of 24 hours. After the balloon expired Lee went into cardiac arrest and coded but thanks to the amazing hospital staff and Lee's strength he pulled through and his heart started back again. The Chatty hospital knew it was time for Lee to leave their wonderful care and make the journey to a better suited hospital. Vanderbilt was contacted and a Helicopter dispatched immediately to come get Lee. He arrived yesterday(Sunday) at Vanderbilt and the doctors there began immediately working on Lee. The began by placing a stint in his heart and hooking it up to electrodes to help it beat while it was recovering. This was working fine, but at 4:15am, this morning, he went back into cardiac arrest. Again thanks to the amazing hospital staff they were able to revive him. At this time the doctors called in the transplant team to decided if Lee needed to undergo an emergency heart transplant.  The doctors decided they were going to try one more thing and immediately placed a Pace Maker in Lee's heart. At this time Irene told me she whispered to Lee that he was to fight his ass off and beat this.  She said he was able to move his eyes and squeeze her hand, and Lee has done just that he has been fighting his ass off all day today.

I got to the hospital today along with another great friend and this was what happened:

Paul and I got in his room where he was heavily sedated. His mom said he was doing a lot better and I could tell that was the truth. He had all his color back and his hands were warm. After a few minutes of talking to him he woke from sedation. He was able to scribble us a message which read in true Mista Lee fashion, 'THANKS FOR COMING.."MEANS" ALOT'. We talked to him full of confidence that he was going to return to us all and we were going to continue this amazing party we call life. We told him his only job was to fight his ass off and he nodded his head. I'll be honest I've known Lee a very long time and he has been one of my main climbing partners and not until today did I realize just how damn strong Lee really is. So after a few minutes we knew he needed to get back to sleep and as we left he squeezed my hand, through a peace sign and a thumbs up  and though he couldn't raise his arm gave Paul and me knuckles!

As for Lee's mom she is very optimistic and appears to be doing well. It is still imperative that we continue to pray for Lee as much as we can until he is back to chillin with us. He's not out of the water by any means but as I said before he is doing better and is fighting his ass off.

I really want to thanks Julie for being so positive and keeping us updated through this hard times. I know this is hard but hang in there Julie and keep sending our boy all that positive energy.


Thanks
 
Ben