Lori Matijczuk's Fight For Her Life

On August 14th at about 10pm we got a heart wrenching phone call from our dad saying "get here your mom has stopped breathing and she has no pulse." When we pulled up to their house, mom was laying on the floor unconscious and the EMT's were giving her CPR. After about 5 minutes, they were able to get a pulse and stabilize her enough to transport her to St. Marys hospital. In the emergency room they had to put her on a ventilator because she was not breathing on her own. From there they moved her to the icu. Shortly after she arrived in the icu she started having seizures. They had to paralyze her body to stop her body shaking on the outside even though she was still shaking on the inside. The Drs told us the seizures could be from her brain reacting to not getting enough oxygen.  In order to preserve whatever brain function she had the hospital induced hypothermia. They cooled her whole body down to about 32°C which took about 12 hours. Then they warmed her backup slowly. During her time there we learned she had pneumonia in both lungs and her heart was in bad shape. Her heart was only functioning at about 5%. She was scheduled for an mri on Wednesday the 17th and dad was told the Dr that does the mri was sick and it would have to wait till the next day. That answer was unacceptable so my dad made the call to have her transferred to a better hospital. After calling several different hospitals in Chicago, Loyola decided to accept her. They tried to set up for her to be airlifted but with the storms coming both helicopter companies wouldn't fly. So we decided to have her transferred in an ambulance. Mom arrived at Loyola Wednesday night and as soon as we arrived they told us they were gonna run several tests including an mri. The mri results came back and there were no signs of permanent brain damage. But she had alot of other things not working in her favor. She was having full blown seizures, she was still on the ventilator, she
had Mrsa, she ended up with a infection in her bowel that is very contagious, and her heart was extremely weak. They tried to take her sedation down throughout the next couple days and as soon as she got down really low her seizures came back full force. They asked to do a spinal tap on her to see if they could find something that was causing these seizures. As a family we consented to the spinal tap. The results came back good. But at the same time not good because they still didn't know
what was causing these seizures. Which also means they can't go in and figure out why her heart is so weak. Sometime in the next couple days they determined her central line was infected which caused an infection in her blood. In order to fix it they had to take out the line and put a new line in her neck which had a whole new set of risks like puncturing a lung, more infection, or possibly bleeding out. We decided as a family it had to be done. They prepped her and everything went fine. On and off she's been also battling a fever which could be from multiple different things. Unfortunately we still don't know what are causing her seizures or how to stop them. And until they stop they can't treat her heart or try to wake her. August 24th puts us at 11 days in icu on a ventilator. We were asked  with the state that she's in if we still wanted then to treat her. Without hesitation we said "Yes". With that being said she could only be on the ventilator for another 3 days at most so we had to make the decision to put in a trach and
feeding tube. There are several risks including her heart stopping but we have to continue to fight for her. Her body hasn't gave up on us so we won't give up on her. 


With all that being said our family could really use any help we could get. Our Dad was supposed to start his new job the Monday after she arrived at the hospital which he was unable to do since he is at the hospital at all times by mom's side. Mom has no income at the moment either until her short term disability
starts. Regardless mom's stay at the hospital is not going to be cheap. Insurance is not going to cover everything and who knows how much those bills are going to be. The last thing we want our Dad to have to worry and struggle with is whether or not he can pay the bills or my moms bills and hospits bills while our Mom is fighting to stay alive. We are trying to relieve any extra worries or stress while we work to save our Moms life. 

Thank you so much in advance to everyones prayers and support at this time. It means more to us than words can describe.