Sue Kicking Cancer & a Coma

My name is Kate Gallagher, and I'm raising money to help pay my mom's medical bills and expenses. I'm the youngest of four kids spanning 8 years. A year ago our mom was super active, but around the beginning of June she started having shortness of breath, chest pain, and fatigue. One night she had so much trouble breathing that instead of going to work in the morning, she went to the ER. Within a couple of hours, they were talking about cancer & the next day she was transferred to the Cancer Institute of New Jersey. Those are the only two days she took off from work.

From June 30th-August 16th she was in the hospital with acute leukemia, getting chemo, fighting off two rare infections she caught while her immune system was down, and working full time. She had a card table with her work computer, monitor, and files set up in her hospital room and would be working away while actively receiving chemo infusions. She went home for a couple of weeks and then went in for round two on September 7th. She, working full time, did her chemo, got another infection, fought it off, and went home on October 14th. But she's a superstar. She went home for two weeks during which she celebrated her 57th birthday, buzzed off the rest of her hair, got fitted for a wig, and walked a 5K for Lupus in Philly. On November 1st, she went back for chemo round 3. At this point, her cancer responded so well that she was starting consolidation chemo, expecting to do a couple more rounds followed by remission. It was a super promising prognosis. She did chemo for a week, went home, and was totally fine for another week.

Then on November 14th, none of us could reach her. It took a while to put that together because we all live in different places, but that evening my grandmother and dad went over to her house to check on her. They found her barely conscious, in her soiled bed, too weak to do just about anything. The ambulance came and took her straight to the ER at the Cancer Institute. She was unresponsive upon arrival and put in the ICU. For a couple of days, it was all the same and by the 17th she was more conscious and even FaceTimed me. But she was septic.

The next day she went into septic shock and acute respiratory distress. They intubated her, inserted a drain and had my brother who lives in NJ call the rest of us to say we should all come home immediately. The rest of us kids live in Wisconsin, Chicago, and Kansas, and all flew home that evening.

The next morning, we got to the hospital where the ICU doctor told us her chances were next to none. If she survived the weekend it would be both astounding and promising, but the look on his face said it all. She had basically fallen into a coma herself, but could maybe still hear us so they gave us a couple of hours to talk to her. Then she was fully sedated and paralyzed so that the ventilator could fully take over. We left around 11pm and everything remained the same overnight. But at 7:45am, they called us saying that her blood pressure suddenly dropped and she had minutes to live. We rushed over, and they had stabilized her vitals. But to do so they had to add a 4th medication to keep her blood pressure up and she still wasn't oxygenating well so they had to add nitric oxide. This unfortunately meant that for the next couple of days while it was on, my sister, pregnant with mom's first grandchild, couldn't be in the room with her.

At this point, she was on two sedatives, a paralytic, 100% ventilator and oxygen, nitric oxide, four blood pressure pressers, IV nutrition, and every antibiotic offered in the hospital. At some point that day I heard one doctor say to another "wow, most people would be in total kidney failure by now," but she is a fighter. We put her favorite music on shuffle and took shifts sitting with her and talking to her.

Over the next couple of days, they lowered lots of her meds including the sedatives. She should have woken up before Thanksgiving but didn't for three weeks. She remained in a coma that not a single doctor could explain. Even the doctors who knew her on the chemo floor said it was jarring to see this. Each day a new beep or a slight change would have another doctor telling us she wouldn’t make it out of this, but we weren’t giving up and neither was mom. The doctors don’t see people come through what mom has gone through, but unless her heart gave out, we were not ready to stop.

Eventually, one doctor decided to try one other last-ditch effort. After a few days and four rounds of plasmapheresis, she started nodding yes and no. Eventually, she was awake for a few hours most days and could start wiggling her fingers. ICU nurses who had cared for her for just one day or one night during her stay were coming over at the start of their shifts to see for themselves. The doctor from that first weekend periodically visited and was in disbelief. On December 16th, they took the tube out and gave her a trach. Then she moved out of the ICU after over a month. Between Christmas and New Year's she was fully off the ventilator. At the beginning of January, she passed the test to start being allowed to eat, did VERY well, and got the trach taken out. She was transferred to rehab on January 10th. Since going to rehab, her progress accelerated beyond words. She is getting herself out of bed with minimal help, walking with a walker, going up and down a couple of steps, feeding herself (if someone else cuts up the food), brushing her teeth, and more. On, February 9th, she was discharged to my grandmother's, who will help care for her along with the home health aide who will come a couple days each week.

At the beginning of rehab she kept saying, "I could go back to work today if I could just sit up and type!" and she has all her normal wits about her (while she doesn’t remember any of the coma, she said that she remembers knowing it was Thanksgiving and wondering why none of us were bringing her food). Somehow through all of this, there was no cognitive damage and even though her physical abilities have changed a lot, we still have our same ol’ mom.

She will continue to receive physical and occupational therapy and hopes to get back to work as soon as possible! Continuing chemo is also in the cards, but we do not yet have an update on the leukemia status.

Unfortunately, all of this comes with a cost. Throughout everything, we ran into obstacle after obstacle with insurance, and even after figuring all of that out, the bills are piling up. The medical costs are VERY high in addition to having to continue paying her rent, college loans, and other bills.

If you know our family, you know we're not often the ones to ask for help, but the medical situation at hand and an imperfect healthcare system can humble anyone in an instant. Anything helps.