Help Kristin Kay Fighting For Her Life From COVID
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It is often said that COVID only affects the elderly and sick. Well, this is the story of Kristin Kay, my beautiful, intelligent, compassionate and loving 31-YEAR-OLD HEALTHY wife, who is currently fighting for her life after contracting COVID-19 in December 2020. As of this writing on January 25th, 2021, Kristin is on her 27th consecutive day of hospitalization and 20th consecutive day of being fully sedated/asleep while ON LIFE SUPPORT. Kristin’s lungs are worse today than they were when she was admitted 27 days ago. If her lungs don’t improve soon, we might have to consider a full lung transplant, if there are even a pair of lungs available to her. Kristin’s chances of survival decrease by the day as the statistical likelihood of her getting a serious blood infection or complication rises with every day she is hospitalized.
https://youtu.be/f06RyQVHN0E
*Slide show of Healthy Lungs vs Kristin's Lungs at Hospital Admission vs Kristin's Lungs Now
The next 3 paragraphs discuss the financial hardship we are facing and how donated money will be spent. Beyond paragraph 3 is Kristin's story and a detailed account of her hospitalization.
In addition to the overwhelming emotional distress, we are on the brink of potentially losing everything we have worked for…our home in Gainesville, Kristin’s very recently opened family medicine clinic in Lake City (now closed), our savings, and our retirement. All of that is on the line whether Kristin survives this or not as my single income is not enough to keep our home and maintain the life we currently know. Before Kristin got sick, we were truly a team as we both contributed financially to the life we’ve built for ourselves. Through this GoFundMe I am hoping to raise enough funds to cover all expenses projected for the next 9 months. Those expenses are post-hospital medical expenses, out-of-pocket maximum on health insurance, mortgage payments on our home, mortgage payments on our recently opened clinic (now closed), general living expenses and daycare for our 5-year-old son.
We are very fortunate to have health insurance through my employer Publix, but we are still going to have to pay an out-of-pocket max of almost $10,000. Kristin has had dozens of doctors over the past 27 days so both the in-network and out-of-network parts of our out-of-pocket max will be completely maxed out. While our insurance does have home healthcare services available to us, it is limited to 30 visits annually and Kristin will undoubtedly need far more than 30 visits as her recovery at home will span several months according to her doctors. After the 30 visits are exhausted, we will be looking at having to spend approximately $2,000 per month for home health care visits.
I also am currently on leave from work so I can be by Kristin’s side every day 7 days a week. Right now, I am finishing up some sick pay time I had accrued and next up I will have to start spending our savings and retirement funds to pay all the expenses I have detailed above. Even if you are unable to donate, I am still so greatly appreciative that you have read this far. If for nothing else, please just take from Kristin’s story that COVID doesn’t only affect the elderly and sick.
Below this point begins Kristin's story.
***************************************************
By God’s beautiful design Kristin entered my life after she messaged me on the dating website J-Date. We had our first date on June 9th, 2010 at Ballyhoo Grill in Gainseville, FL and to this day I still remember the moment I first locked eyes with her. Little did I know that the beautiful brown eyes staring back at me were those of the woman I would fall in love with, marry in 2014 and have a beautiful bouncing baby boy with in 2015 by the name of Parker.
At the same time, we were starting our family, Kristin earned her Master’s in Nursing with a specialty in Family Medicine from The University of Central Florida in 2017. Kristin’s desire to specialize in Family Medicine is rooted in her time spent working at HOSPICE as an end-of-life registered nurse covering the small rural cities surrounding Gainesville. She worked at HOSPICE in 2015 while she was pregnant and finishing up her Bachelor’s in Nursing. She is truly a Superwoman. Her experience caring for those in their final days of life in these rural areas opened her eyes to the lack of access to basic medical care in rural areas. From that point forward Kristin dedicated her career to serving those in rural areas.
In November 2020 Kristin achieved two major career milestones as she became one of the first Nurse Practitioners in Florida to be granted autonomous/independent practice rights and at the same time opened her own Family Medicine practice in Lake City an hour North of our home in Gainesville. By choosing to open in Lake City she was following through on her promise to dedicate her career to the underserved individuals living in rural communities.
God had a different plan for Kristin and our family.
On December 30th, 2020 Kristin was admitted to North Florida Regional Medical Center in Gainesville with COVID-19 and bi-lateral pneumonia. Chest X-rays showed a 75% “white-out” of her lungs and she was gasping for air upon arrival to the hospital. She was started on Remdesivir and for five days the nurses and doctors tried to oxygenate her lungs and blood using a CPAP mask paired with proning (laying on stomach) but it wasn’t working and Kristin was getting worse.
On January 3rd, 2021 Kristin was transferred to the ICU. The next day Kristin’s lungs and breathing had gotten so bad that her doctors decided to put her to sleep, intubate her (place breathing tube through the mouth and into the airway) and place her on a ventilator. The ventilator is a machine the size of a small portable A/C unit and its role is to keep a patient alive by feeding oxygen rich air into the lungs and airways so the actual lungs can rest and heal. At first Kristin did ok on the ventilator as some key numbers they track were trending in the right direction. However, the amount of oxygenation she was requiring from the ventilator was so large that she was at risk of oxygen toxicity which can lead to multi-organ failure. The clock was ticking because 7 days is typically seen as the threshold of time one can be on her level of oxygenation before starting to see multiple organs in her body begin to fail. If you’ve heard stories of people being on the ventilator for weeks those are not untrue stories but the difference in those stories is that their oxygenation settings were able to be reduced to safer levels and therefore the 7-day threshold was no longer in play. At lower oxygenation levels a person indeed can stay on a ventilator for a very long time.
On January 9th, 2021 Kristin was quickly approaching the 7-day threshold and her doctors were not able to lower the oxygenation on the ventilator without putting her into severe respiratory distress. The decision was made to put Kristin on an additional machine called ECMO. In its simplest form ECMO acts as a pair of lungs outside the body. It’s a machine about the size of a small toolbox and functions by drawing blood from Kristin’s body, oxygenating the blood and then returning the blood to Kristin. It does this repeatedly and constantly uninterrupted 24/7. At the same time the ECMO is keeping Kristin alive they still leave her on the ventilator but at a much lower oxygenation setting.
On January 15th we received a little bit of positive news to hold on to. Kristin had tested negative for COVID-19 two days in a row, so they started to allow visitors one at a time. Unfortunately, they do not allow minors so the light of her life, our son Parker, has not been able to visit. Prior to that day the only contact we were permitted was daily phone calls/video calls with Kristin while she was awake and then daily calls with her nurses and doctors once she was intubated and asleep. To be able to be by Kristin’s side touching her, talking to her and just being with her was a huge sense of relief to myself and our entire family.
Through January 20th, 2021 Kristin’s lungs continued to get worse in the daily chest x-rays. The days and nights were filled with the amazing nurses managing all the different sedation medications and trying to wake Kristin up as there are long term risks and complications of staying sedated/asleep for such long periods of time. Unfortunately, it’s been a real struggle to keep Kristin awake because her vitals become erratic and reach dangerous levels every time they try to wake her. When that happens, they have to increase the sedation medications and put her back to sleep and all progress is lost. It’s like a nightmare replaying over and over again every day as they attempt to get her to be awake and stable.
January 21st, 2021 was a very scary day. All day long Kristin’s vitals were erratic. While I was sitting by her side, out of nowhere her pulse cratered in the blink of an eye going from 90 beats per minute to 20 beats per minute. The nurse hit the emergency button on the wall and called for a crash cart. As I stood there watching 10 people rush into the room, I was helpless to think that I was about to witness the final moments of my wife’s life. Fortunately, her heart rate recovered on its own about 30 seconds later and the defibrillator paddles were not needed. Later that evening her heart rate crashed again an hour or so after Kristin’s mother Maryann left when visiting hours ended. So, at 10:00pm they called me to let me know they were wheeling Kristin and all her equipment and poles and whatnot down to the Cath Lab and they were going to give her a pacemaker. The procedure went well, and Kristin was back in her room by 1:30am with a pacemaker protecting her heart rate from dropping to dangerous levels again. The doctors don’t know exactly why Kristin’s heart is having these crashes, but they suspect it is related to the pressure of blood flowing in from the ECMO and somehow that causes problems with the electrodes in her heart.
On January 22nd, 2021 Kristin underwent a tracheotomy. A tracheotomy is a surgical procedure where they place a breathing tube directly into your airway via the neck/throat. This was done so the breathing tube could be removed from Kristin’s mouth as she always chokes on the tubes when waking up from sedation. The decision was made to make this switch in the hopes that having her mouth free will reduce her anxiety and help keep her stable when coming out of sedation.
On January 23rd, 2021, the ECMO nurses noticed the pressures on the ECMO machine computer were starting to have issues. They couldn’t find the specific problem, so they switched out the machine for a new one. Kristin’s body had grown accustomed to the old machine, almost as if it had become part of her body since it had been there for 15+ days, so when the new machine was installed in the morning her body spent the next 24 hours fighting against it as if it was a foreign invader. As a result, the plan to try to wake her was scrapped for the day and the goal became managing her erratic blood pressure and heart rate.
As of this writing on January 25th, 2021 Kristin is still sedated, still on ECMO, still on the ventilator, still on the pacemaker, still has a trachea and Kristin’s chest x-ray is worse than it’s been at any point in the past as the lungs are now 100% “white out”.
While her lungs have not yet reached the point that they are eligible for a lung transplant there is no light at the end of the tunnel right now and it’s unknown how many more weeks or months she might remain hospitalized. And even if she does become a candidate for lungs there is no telling how many other people she will be behind.
I leave you with one of Kristin’s favorite quotes and if you know Kristin you know she lives and breathes this quote every day of her life. “Be Kind. For everyone you meet is fighting a battle you know nothing about.” -Wendy Mass
Thank you,
Steven Kay
https://youtu.be/f06RyQVHN0E
*Slide show of Healthy Lungs vs Kristin's Lungs at Hospital Admission vs Kristin's Lungs Now
The next 3 paragraphs discuss the financial hardship we are facing and how donated money will be spent. Beyond paragraph 3 is Kristin's story and a detailed account of her hospitalization.
In addition to the overwhelming emotional distress, we are on the brink of potentially losing everything we have worked for…our home in Gainesville, Kristin’s very recently opened family medicine clinic in Lake City (now closed), our savings, and our retirement. All of that is on the line whether Kristin survives this or not as my single income is not enough to keep our home and maintain the life we currently know. Before Kristin got sick, we were truly a team as we both contributed financially to the life we’ve built for ourselves. Through this GoFundMe I am hoping to raise enough funds to cover all expenses projected for the next 9 months. Those expenses are post-hospital medical expenses, out-of-pocket maximum on health insurance, mortgage payments on our home, mortgage payments on our recently opened clinic (now closed), general living expenses and daycare for our 5-year-old son.
We are very fortunate to have health insurance through my employer Publix, but we are still going to have to pay an out-of-pocket max of almost $10,000. Kristin has had dozens of doctors over the past 27 days so both the in-network and out-of-network parts of our out-of-pocket max will be completely maxed out. While our insurance does have home healthcare services available to us, it is limited to 30 visits annually and Kristin will undoubtedly need far more than 30 visits as her recovery at home will span several months according to her doctors. After the 30 visits are exhausted, we will be looking at having to spend approximately $2,000 per month for home health care visits.
I also am currently on leave from work so I can be by Kristin’s side every day 7 days a week. Right now, I am finishing up some sick pay time I had accrued and next up I will have to start spending our savings and retirement funds to pay all the expenses I have detailed above. Even if you are unable to donate, I am still so greatly appreciative that you have read this far. If for nothing else, please just take from Kristin’s story that COVID doesn’t only affect the elderly and sick.
Below this point begins Kristin's story.
***************************************************
By God’s beautiful design Kristin entered my life after she messaged me on the dating website J-Date. We had our first date on June 9th, 2010 at Ballyhoo Grill in Gainseville, FL and to this day I still remember the moment I first locked eyes with her. Little did I know that the beautiful brown eyes staring back at me were those of the woman I would fall in love with, marry in 2014 and have a beautiful bouncing baby boy with in 2015 by the name of Parker.
At the same time, we were starting our family, Kristin earned her Master’s in Nursing with a specialty in Family Medicine from The University of Central Florida in 2017. Kristin’s desire to specialize in Family Medicine is rooted in her time spent working at HOSPICE as an end-of-life registered nurse covering the small rural cities surrounding Gainesville. She worked at HOSPICE in 2015 while she was pregnant and finishing up her Bachelor’s in Nursing. She is truly a Superwoman. Her experience caring for those in their final days of life in these rural areas opened her eyes to the lack of access to basic medical care in rural areas. From that point forward Kristin dedicated her career to serving those in rural areas.
In November 2020 Kristin achieved two major career milestones as she became one of the first Nurse Practitioners in Florida to be granted autonomous/independent practice rights and at the same time opened her own Family Medicine practice in Lake City an hour North of our home in Gainesville. By choosing to open in Lake City she was following through on her promise to dedicate her career to the underserved individuals living in rural communities.
God had a different plan for Kristin and our family.
On December 30th, 2020 Kristin was admitted to North Florida Regional Medical Center in Gainesville with COVID-19 and bi-lateral pneumonia. Chest X-rays showed a 75% “white-out” of her lungs and she was gasping for air upon arrival to the hospital. She was started on Remdesivir and for five days the nurses and doctors tried to oxygenate her lungs and blood using a CPAP mask paired with proning (laying on stomach) but it wasn’t working and Kristin was getting worse.
On January 3rd, 2021 Kristin was transferred to the ICU. The next day Kristin’s lungs and breathing had gotten so bad that her doctors decided to put her to sleep, intubate her (place breathing tube through the mouth and into the airway) and place her on a ventilator. The ventilator is a machine the size of a small portable A/C unit and its role is to keep a patient alive by feeding oxygen rich air into the lungs and airways so the actual lungs can rest and heal. At first Kristin did ok on the ventilator as some key numbers they track were trending in the right direction. However, the amount of oxygenation she was requiring from the ventilator was so large that she was at risk of oxygen toxicity which can lead to multi-organ failure. The clock was ticking because 7 days is typically seen as the threshold of time one can be on her level of oxygenation before starting to see multiple organs in her body begin to fail. If you’ve heard stories of people being on the ventilator for weeks those are not untrue stories but the difference in those stories is that their oxygenation settings were able to be reduced to safer levels and therefore the 7-day threshold was no longer in play. At lower oxygenation levels a person indeed can stay on a ventilator for a very long time.
On January 9th, 2021 Kristin was quickly approaching the 7-day threshold and her doctors were not able to lower the oxygenation on the ventilator without putting her into severe respiratory distress. The decision was made to put Kristin on an additional machine called ECMO. In its simplest form ECMO acts as a pair of lungs outside the body. It’s a machine about the size of a small toolbox and functions by drawing blood from Kristin’s body, oxygenating the blood and then returning the blood to Kristin. It does this repeatedly and constantly uninterrupted 24/7. At the same time the ECMO is keeping Kristin alive they still leave her on the ventilator but at a much lower oxygenation setting.
On January 15th we received a little bit of positive news to hold on to. Kristin had tested negative for COVID-19 two days in a row, so they started to allow visitors one at a time. Unfortunately, they do not allow minors so the light of her life, our son Parker, has not been able to visit. Prior to that day the only contact we were permitted was daily phone calls/video calls with Kristin while she was awake and then daily calls with her nurses and doctors once she was intubated and asleep. To be able to be by Kristin’s side touching her, talking to her and just being with her was a huge sense of relief to myself and our entire family.
Through January 20th, 2021 Kristin’s lungs continued to get worse in the daily chest x-rays. The days and nights were filled with the amazing nurses managing all the different sedation medications and trying to wake Kristin up as there are long term risks and complications of staying sedated/asleep for such long periods of time. Unfortunately, it’s been a real struggle to keep Kristin awake because her vitals become erratic and reach dangerous levels every time they try to wake her. When that happens, they have to increase the sedation medications and put her back to sleep and all progress is lost. It’s like a nightmare replaying over and over again every day as they attempt to get her to be awake and stable.
January 21st, 2021 was a very scary day. All day long Kristin’s vitals were erratic. While I was sitting by her side, out of nowhere her pulse cratered in the blink of an eye going from 90 beats per minute to 20 beats per minute. The nurse hit the emergency button on the wall and called for a crash cart. As I stood there watching 10 people rush into the room, I was helpless to think that I was about to witness the final moments of my wife’s life. Fortunately, her heart rate recovered on its own about 30 seconds later and the defibrillator paddles were not needed. Later that evening her heart rate crashed again an hour or so after Kristin’s mother Maryann left when visiting hours ended. So, at 10:00pm they called me to let me know they were wheeling Kristin and all her equipment and poles and whatnot down to the Cath Lab and they were going to give her a pacemaker. The procedure went well, and Kristin was back in her room by 1:30am with a pacemaker protecting her heart rate from dropping to dangerous levels again. The doctors don’t know exactly why Kristin’s heart is having these crashes, but they suspect it is related to the pressure of blood flowing in from the ECMO and somehow that causes problems with the electrodes in her heart.
On January 22nd, 2021 Kristin underwent a tracheotomy. A tracheotomy is a surgical procedure where they place a breathing tube directly into your airway via the neck/throat. This was done so the breathing tube could be removed from Kristin’s mouth as she always chokes on the tubes when waking up from sedation. The decision was made to make this switch in the hopes that having her mouth free will reduce her anxiety and help keep her stable when coming out of sedation.
On January 23rd, 2021, the ECMO nurses noticed the pressures on the ECMO machine computer were starting to have issues. They couldn’t find the specific problem, so they switched out the machine for a new one. Kristin’s body had grown accustomed to the old machine, almost as if it had become part of her body since it had been there for 15+ days, so when the new machine was installed in the morning her body spent the next 24 hours fighting against it as if it was a foreign invader. As a result, the plan to try to wake her was scrapped for the day and the goal became managing her erratic blood pressure and heart rate.
As of this writing on January 25th, 2021 Kristin is still sedated, still on ECMO, still on the ventilator, still on the pacemaker, still has a trachea and Kristin’s chest x-ray is worse than it’s been at any point in the past as the lungs are now 100% “white out”.
While her lungs have not yet reached the point that they are eligible for a lung transplant there is no light at the end of the tunnel right now and it’s unknown how many more weeks or months she might remain hospitalized. And even if she does become a candidate for lungs there is no telling how many other people she will be behind.
I leave you with one of Kristin’s favorite quotes and if you know Kristin you know she lives and breathes this quote every day of her life. “Be Kind. For everyone you meet is fighting a battle you know nothing about.” -Wendy Mass
Thank you,
Steven Kay
Organizer
Steven Kay
Organizer
Gainesville, FL
