On August 12th, Jordan was lying down with his daughter Amalia for bed. A few moments later, Amalia went to find Jordan’s wife, Tracey, and said, “Dad was breathing funny.” When Tracey found him, Jordan was suffering what we now know was a cardiac arrest. She called 911, and at some point, Jordan passed away. Tracey did CPR until paramedics arrived and estimates Jordan was dead between 4-5 minutes that night.

The following 3 weeks were spent in the ICU at the University of Minnesota. Jordan’s “widow maker” artery was completely clogged, which was fixed by a stent. Jordan was placed on an ECMO machine, a specific life support machine made for cardiac arrest patients. Only two hospitals in the entire country have this technology, and Jordan was luckily 20 minutes away from one of them. We found out on August 15th that Jordan has a moderate anoxic brain injury due to the lack of oxygen to his brain. All of Jordan’s vital organs received no damage and have recovered well. Jordan was taken off life support on August 18th and became one of the 10% of individuals who survive a cardiac arrest outside of the hospital.

From what we’ve been told, the majority of Jordan’s brain cells died and they do not grow back. Jordan’s brain needs to go through neuroplasticity in hopes it will re-wire itself and he can start to relearn everything. The family does not want to share more at this time on where Jordan is at in recovery or what this might look like since there are so many unknowns.

Jordan was working on developing a new Dakota Language program for South Washington Schools and was the sole provider for his wife and their two children, Amalia (5) and Xavier (3). While Jordan’s future is unknown, we do know he would want his family taken care of through this hard time. Jordan will need months of rehabilitation and care. Any donations would go to helping his family pay their bills and navigate the next few months. Thank you in advance.