Patrick Ecklund Benefit
His story: The first week of November, Patrick begin having pain in his chest when he ate anything. This went on for a few days and so he decided to see a doctor. His regular doctor was unavailable for a couple weeks, so he went to urgent care. There they ran a bunch of tests and checked his heart over good. They diagnosed him with "GERD," put him on medicine told him to change his diet. Over the next week and a half, he felt his chest pain with eating improved. We thought the diet change and medicine had helped. It is believed now, that when this pain began he had somehow, perforated his esophagus. The reason he started feeling better is, the perforation had started to heal. Unfortunately, we were clueless to the life-threatening infection that had started to grow within his chest.
On Monday, November 18th he began feeling ill halfway through his work day. He decided to tough it out the rest of the day. When he got home, his whole body hurt and he had a temperature 102.5. We thought he had the flu.
He woke on Tuesday, November 19th with a temperature of 104. He had no choice but to call into work unfortunately he had just used his last day of vacation the week prior. He stayed in bed, sleeping all day. During the night the pain in his chest got so bad he couldn't sleep and he felt short of breath. He was trying to sleep sitting on the couch when I got up for work Wednesday November 20th. He told me before moving back to bed that he thought he should go to urgent care today. Thank you God he had sense enough to go in.
His aunt brought him to urgent care around 9:00am. The triage nurse took his vitals, and determined his heart rate was 180-200 beats per minute. This put him at very high risk for stroke. They moved him to the emergency room and began working him over. After running a bunch of tests, the CT scan gave the doctor a clue to what was going on. It revealed there was inflammation and air around his heart. The doctor said the only way he thought the air could have gotten there is if you have perforated your esophagus.
We were informed that he would need a thoracic surgery team and he would need to be transferred. St. Cloud was our first choice because it was closest to our home but unfortunately they were not comfortable dealing with Patrick's case. The doctor gave us two more choices and we chose HCMC because he had been treated there in the past. HCMC told the doctor they could take him. He arrived there about 3:30. Here he was told they didn't have the right people to treat him.
We waited at HCMC for nearly six hours waiting to be transferred to a hospital that could handle his very rare case. We arrived at Abbott Northwestern around 9: 30pm. He was placed in ICU the thoracic surgeon came in the next morning. He told us a GI doctor would have to do an endoscopy and place a stent in his esophagus to keep the hole from leaking. This was finally done November 21st.
On November 22nd, he had a procedure that removed 390cc of fluid from his chest. He was kept in the ICU till November 26th. He was now in a regular hospital room but his condition begin deteriorating. He was needing oxygen and his temperature returned. On November 27th a CT scan told them the stent had slid down on top of his stomach and that fluid was building up in his chest again, he needed surgery,. They performed a RVats-decortication-Mediastinal drainage with Thoracotomy. Basically, they cut him open going in on the right side between two ribs, cleaned out an abscess and placed four chest tubes. He was placed back in the ICU.
November 29th the GI doctor was available to remove the stent that had slipped into his stomach. Through a CT scan with contrast they decided he no longer needed the stent. He was moved back to a regular hospital room on November 30th. During this ordeal he was unable to eat or get out of bed. He has lost 30 Ibs; he is very weak.
On December 6th, they removed two of the four chest tubes. He was finally cleared to eat 10 grams of fat, real food. Prior to this, he was allowed broth and Jell-o.
On December 9th, the last two chest tubes were removed. He was sent home still on a 10 grams of fat diet. As of now, we are unsure of how long he will be unable to work.
UPDATE December 19th: Patrick had his first follow up appointment since being discharged. We were very concerned that he would be readmitted. He has been running a low fever since he has been home. The last two mornings he has had trouble with his breathing and the fever spiked over 101. Happy to report he is still able to stay at home. The chest X-rays looked good. His oral antibiotics are not strong enough to fight his infection. So they gave him IV antibiotics.
A nurse will be coming to our house daily to administer his IV antibiotics. He was also pleasantly surprised to hear he has been cleared to eat a regular diet! Thank you all for your continued prayers and support for our family!
