Fund Ron Sr.'s Fight for Life

Hi, my name is Ron Jr. I am fundraising for my dad, Ron Drake Sr a proud Navy veteran, a father of 4, and grandfather of 9. As many of you may know, my dad has been battling his emphysema/COPD for many years. The advanced stage of his disease was severely limiting his activity level and quality of life. For 3 years, he has been working towards getting approved and listed for a lung transplant. My siblings, wife, and I became his support team and have dedicated much of our lives to supporting him on his journey to a better quality of life.

On April 19th at 9:00 p.m., we received the call that there was a match. We had just under 4 hours to get dad to the UW Madison Hospital to prep him for his lung transplant.

The transplant surgery itself went fairly smooth, only a slight hiccup due to the size difference of donor and dad, but it all worked out well.

He was awake and extubated less than 12 hours later, walking in the hallway and working with therapy the next day. He was determined to get out of the hospital and start living life again. Everything was going better than any of us had anticipated... Then we hit a couple of "bumps in the road" with swallowing difficulties and pain management. On the night of April 26th, we hit the first big complication. Dad was brought back into surgery to remove a portion of his colon, which died due to lack of circulation after his original surgery. This second surgery prolonged his recovery along with his hospital stay. Many other bumps have been encountered since this, including multiple blood clots in the arms, swelling, pain, blood transfusions, and altered mental status.

I was woken on May 6th at 4:00 am by my phone ringing. It was one of the doctors notifying me that they found dad pulseless and had been preforming life saving measures for 15 minutes, but his prognosis was not looking good... We rushed to Madison, emotions running high, not knowing if he was going to make it. They were able to get his pulse back after multiple rounds of CPR and shocking his heart back into a stable rhythm, but he is still sedated and ventilated.

The cause of this event is still not entirely known, but at this time, he is stabilized.

The fundraising we're doing is for medical costs, the travel/hotel expenses we have and will continue to have as his support team, and also for his prolonged stay expenses that are yet to come. We anticipated a much shorter stay, but with the complications that have been occurring, we are required to travel frequently to Madison for support, post-op education, and to help make decisions while dad is not entirely able to do so himself. His couple of weeks stay we originally planned for, turned into a couple of months more than likely, especially after this morning. My sister, wife, and I have all lost many hours of work due to needing to be at the hospital. Any help to lift the financial burden during this time would be greatly appreciated. Just in the two weeks my dad has been hospitalized the hotels, fuel, and food costs are nearing $3,000 and that's not including the hours of work lost. We are so grateful for all the thoughts and prayers during this time as well, and will continue to update as we are able to. Thank you and please feel free to share.