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Help Linda Carey with medical bills

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On October 27th while dog sitting in Gardnerville for a friend, Linda
started to experience horrific back/abdominal pain (described as worse
than child birth). She called her husband in Reno who immediately
started the trip to Gardnerville and then called 911.  She was taken to
Carson Valley Medical Center where she was found to have a blood
pressure of 220/139. A Cat scan was done and she was diagnosed with an
Aortic Dissection.  She was then told she needed to be transported via
Care Flight to Renown hospital in Reno.  Remarkably, after several shots
of fentanyl for the pain, she asked, “Couldn’t we just drive?”  No!  The
ER doctor explained that an aortic dissection was worse than a heart
attack and Renown was the only hospital equipped to help her.

Linda was admitted at Renown and taken to the ICU where she could be
closely monitored.  Uncontrolled high blood pressure was found to be the
cause of the aortic dissection.  With around the clock care her BP was
lowered to 80/40 and she began to heal.  To her great relief the pain
went completely away and no more pain medications were needed.  It took
six different medications to get her blood pressure under control and
they were all administered through IVs.  Unfortunately the fluid so
overwhelmed her system that it began to build up around her lungs and
made it difficult for her to breathe.  She was intubated (a tube was
inserted past her vocal chords to her lungs) and she was placed on a
ventilator to breathe for her. They continued to administer IV and oral
blood pressure medications to try to control her blood pressure.

After 9 days of being intubated she met the criteria for extubation. The
respiratory therapist removed the tube and Linda was breathing on her
own. She quickly started to have severe respiratory distress. They tried
to re-intubate but there was too much swelling in her airway. The
critical care doctor did an emergency tracheotomy. With this she was
able to be more awake and interactive, but her blood pressures remained
difficult to control. After 2 weeks in the hospital she was still on 2
IV medications and 6 oral medications for her pressures. The vascular
surgeon decided that surgery was necessary. He had been hesitant to do
surgery because of the high risk for paralysis. On Sunday, November 10th
Linda went to surgery where the vascular surgeon inserted a dacron
sleeve (stent) into her artery reaching from her clavicle to just above
her kidney.  With the sleeve re-enforcing her artery her blood pressure
could be sustained at a higher level without further harm to her.  The
surgery was a great success. She has not had any signs of paralysis or
other complications.  Over the following weeks all the IV medications
were stopped and she was able to breathe on her own through the
tracheostomy (without the ventilator).

On November 24th (4 weeks after she was admitted) she was stable enough
to be transferred to a post acute care hospital for the rest of her
recovery. During her time there she has been able to work more with
speech and physical therapy, walking and exercising and learning to
swallow and eat again. A week later she was able to have the trach
removed. She is now itching to go home and spend time with her family
and her fur baby.

 

Fundraising team: Linda Carey (2)

Molly Mahannah
Organizer
Raised $300 from 4 donations
Sparks, NV
Tere Carroll
Team member
This team raised $70 from 2 other donations.

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