Join in Support for Jon & Kelly Duchene Family

Jon, Kelly and their boys are dear friends of ours and are going through a difficult time as Jon continues to battle a life long lung issue. Below is Kelly’s post to family and friends last week. They are the kindest family and would be the first to help others in need and the last to ask others for help for themselves. Please consider helping if you can to support them with their medical costs and other costs of Kelly taking time away from work to spend with Jon and trips to and from hospital in the cities every day. They truly would appreciate any support they receive. Keep them in your prayers!

Hey all, it’s been a long time since we have posted on here. We have some not great news to share. As some of you know the past 6 months have been tough for Jon. He ended up getting a mycobacterium infection that is very hard to treat & very drug resistant that they started treating last Oct. The treatment course is 8-12 months with the use of 3 different antibiotics (typically 1 IV & 2 oral). He tried a couple IV antibiotics that did not go well so they have had to switch things a few different times. Towards the end of Nov/Dec he started getting really nauseous and was not eating or drinking much, had lots of bouts of dry heaving and was feeling dizzy at the time.

He had to go back on portable oxygen at the end of October & used 2 liters when he was moving around, by December he was on 4 liters all the time and in Jan bumped up to 6 liters. Feb 18th he was struggling with maintaining oxygen levels and went to the ER and was admitted to Fairview East bank hospital at the U of MN where he was in for 9 days. He ended up back in the hospital on March 4th and stayed 10 days and when he was released his breathing was pretty good for about a week and then March 23rd went back in with low oxygen levels. He is currently in the hospital & last Friday Jon’s lung transplant Dr who he has seen since transplant came in to see us & let us know that Jon is very sick and unfortunately there isn’t much else they can do for him. We thought the infections he had were under control because it did not show up on cultures in Dec, Jan & Feb but on March 29th a culture came back positive from March 6th. At this time they will continue treating him with antibiotics and see if they can get some improvement. Our hope is that at some point Jon will be able to come home but at this time his oxygen needs are too high for what we are able to do at home. We don’t really know a timeline because it depends on whether the antibiotics help or not but most are drug resistant at this point.