Jacob Strong!

Hello! My name is Emily Brandt. I am Jacob’s older sister. Jacob was diagnosed with Addison’s Disease 12 years ago. The short explanation is when he gets sick he gets really sick because he can not fight off illness on his own without medical help. Unfortunately on Friday, June 19th, he had one of this episodes and endured a cortisone crisis. Our mom found him unconscious at around 12:30pm Friday in his apartment. He was brought to Floyd Valley Hospital in LeMars Iowa where he endured some seizures. He was then transferred to St. Luke’s in Sioux City Iowa and then flown via Helicopter to UNMC in Omaha NE in effort to get him stable and figure out what is causing this. Saturday, June 20th, was a bad day for him. Very low blood pressure, very thin blood, his MRIs were showing that he had had some strokes in different areas of his brain causing 1/3 of the left side of his brain to be damaged, his liver was polluting his blood and later that night he was struggling getting deep breaths and needed to be placed on a ventilator. Sunday morning, June 21st, he was showing some signs of improvement, yet still unconscious. His liver started behaving, his breathing stabilized, platelet count rising, and blood pressure getting better and he started showing some signs of reaction. He was able to wiggle his fingers and toes. Still unresponsive to much else other than pain stimuli. At 7:30pm Sunday evening, he was still only responding with toe wiggles. Monday morning, June 22nd, when our mom talked to his nurses they informed her what a great night he had!! They were able to remove him from the ventilator. The nurse said he could only whisper at that point. Our mom was SHOCKED! He was speaking!! His new nurse informed her that he whispered “hello” to her. This was the best news for us to hear after a very scary 3 days! We had an 11:00am Zoom meeting with him figuring that we were going to get to see him and talk to the doctors and nurses. Much to our surprise Jake was speaking to us and holding the iPad himself! He was able to speak pretty clearly and not slurred-he stumbled around some words but we could understand him for the most part!! He smiled, he cried, he told us he missed us and that he loved us. We told him how much we loved and missed him and how amazing he is! I told him there are so many of you lifting his name in prayer all over!! Later Monday afternoon the nurses let our parents know that he got up and walked a little down the hallway! It is so incredible how much had changed in just 24-34 hours! Tuesday, June 23rd, the hospital moved him out of ICU and to a “regular room” on a normal floor. They are going to start speech therapy to see where he is at with that and if he will be able to eat on his own so they can take out his feeding tube! We are so grateful for all of you taking time to pray for him and our family. It means more to us than you could ever imagine!♥️ I’m starting this page to help raise funds for all of Jacob’s medical expenses. Again, we thank you all for your prayers, kind words and encouraging messages to Jacob! Bless you all!