Brittany's Medical Funds







From the excitement of getting her braces off on Wednesday, June 8, 2016, to fighting for her life just a few days later, 17-year-old Brittany Akemi Tomlin (Akemi means “bright and beautiful” in Japanese… a name given to her at birth by her Japanese grandmother) and her family never dreamed a routine tonsillectomy would have such a major impact on her happy and innocent world filled with soccer, cheerleading, and friends. Brittany, a healthy rising senior at El Camino High School in Oceanside, California, went in to the hospital on Thursday, June 9th for a standard procedure to remove her tonsils, but is now on a ventilator fighting for her life. This nightmare is the result of Brittany contracting double pneumonia during her operation, most likely from gases entering her lungs when the breathing tube was being removed. With an extremely high fever, chills, vomiting, diarrhea, dangerously elevated blood pressure, low oxygen levels, and a collapsed lung, doctors attempted to extract the mucus in her lungs, but Brittany’s body rejected the tube and her airway closed, making it necessary to place her on a ventilator and be put in the intensive care unit. After repeated requests to have her transferred to a different hospital because her condition was deteriorating, doctors finally acknowledged that they did not have the resources to treat Brittany in her current, critical state. Hours after stabilizing Brittany in preparation to be airlifted to Rady Children’s Hospital in San Diego, she miraculously made the flight on Saturday, June 18th. She was immediately placed in intensive care and put back on a ventilator. The lab results from the cultures taken of the mucus filling her lungs eventually came back showing that in addition to the pneumonia, she also had both a fungal and viral infection. The reality of this terribly disastrous situation has been traumatic for our family. With a severely compromised immune system, Brittany is in an induced coma so her body can rest and, with the addition of several extremely strong medications and the ventilator, attempt to fight these infections in her body and hopefully heal. Her condition is critical and more serious than I can possibly express… her prognosis is unknown at this time. The doctors and staff at Rady have been tremendous and are doing all they can to help Brittany beat this unfortunate illness, but they are preparing us for a long, complicated journey at best. As her mom, I would like to first ask anyone who is willing to pray to lift my beautiful daughter up for total healing. Also, if you are inclined to donate anything at all to support this cause to help cover what I’m sure will be exorbitant costs for Brittany’s lengthy hospital stay, my family and I would be so extremely grateful. Thank you!