Help Kurt Klett on his road to recovery

Hi, my name is MacKenzie, my family and I are fundraising for my dad, Kurtis Klett. My dad was diagnosed with MS in '97, the medications he is on for his MS make him immunocompromised. In December of 2021 he started getting a cough that we didn't pay much attention to until he got covid in the end of April. Considering his status of being immunocompromised he didn't seem to get too sick while having covid, just body aches and a fever. But we did notice that his cough was getting worse; eventually he started to struggle with his breathing. He would cough so hard that he couldn't catch his breath. He became concerned in the beginning of May and went to urgent care in hopes of preventing pneumonia or bronchitis. After taking steroids and antibiotics for a couple of weeks he saw no change and went back into urgent care. The doctor was concerned he had a blood clot in his lung, he had a CT scan but it didn't show any clots. He was then diagnosed with covid induced pneumonia on May 26th and put on more steroids, antibiotics and an inhaler to help treat it.

On may 27th I drove my dad to the emergency room because he was having a very hard time breathing. Once admitted he was put on oxygen, they took a chest X-ray and labs. It was decided he needed to stay for observation, likely for a few days. He quickly declined once at the hospital, by Monday his oxygen needs increased and another CT scan was done. This CT showed 3 blood clots in his right lung. He was started on heparin to treat the clots. By Wednesday he was on a 40 lpm 70% high flow oxygen system. Because his oxygen needs were so high and he had the 3 blood clots in his right lung among other issues he was transferred to the ICU at Abbot Northwestern. There he continued to decline and with the high oxygen intake they were speculating using a breathing tube. The blood thinning medication he was on to help alleviate the blood clots ended up causing bleeding into his abdominal muscle(fascia), this is referred to as a spontaneous rectus hematoma. This causes a lot of pain but thankfully didn't require any surgical intervention. They have since been able to wean his oxygen however there is still a lot of pain to deal with, he has been working with pain management. The good news is that he was transferred out of the ICU on Sunday evening. They are still working to get his pain under control safely and find out what underlying issues might have cause such an illness.

He will hopefully be discharged on June 9 or 10 with a high likelihood of needing to bring home oxygen. There are still goals he needs to meet before discharge. He may need to the help of a transitional care facility to help him recover or the help of home nursing care if he is able to go home. They are speculating a 6 month recovery in which he will be unable to do his normal job of carpentry work around the small town of Faribault. We are hoping to fundraise enough to help cover the medical bills and other costs of living while he is recovering.

We will continue to give updates on Kurt's progress. Anyone that knows him knows that he will work very hard to get his strength back so he can get back to doing what he loves.