John and Kathryn were married in August of 2020.  Just after their one-year anniversary, John began having abdominal pain.  He was initially admitted for the common condition of having a painful gallstone.  However, what was usually a relatively common and fixable problem, soon escalated into a very life-threatening illness. 

Within one week John was transferred via helicopter to two different hospitals and was soon on major life-support therapies.  

The gallstone lodged in the common bile duct and blocked both that duct and the pancreatic duct, which drain bile from the gallbladder and pancreatic enzymes from the pancreas into the small bowel.  This situation caused what is called “necrotizing pancreatitis” – a condition where part or all of the pancreas is destroyed.  John rapidly went into respiratory failure, heart failure with new atrial fibrillation, kidney failure, and began to have severe swelling of his bowels.  He needed ventilatory support to breath, extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) – a type of cardiac bypass machine to provide oxygen to the blood, continuous dialysis, and special medication to help support his blood pressure and control his heart rate.  The swelling in his abdomen became so severe that he required emergency surgery to open his abdomen to relieve the pressure and now has an open wound from his upper abdomen to below his belly button with his bowels covered only by a thin mesh material.  

Blessedly, he has survived.  He has had multiple surgeries and procedures and is now over 80 days in an intensive care bed; he has a tracheostomy, he has skin grafts instead of mesh covering his large open abdomen, his bowels still aren’t working completely and only has feeding through a tube, is now diabetic, currently has an abscess in the upper abdomen and is scheduled for more surgery to clean that out, and remains in the hospital.  

This has already been a major ordeal and trying time for them and it appears there may yet be serious battles to fight, with many more weeks in the hospital.  In fact, there is an expectation of many ups and downs, surgeries, and therapies over the next year or two.  As you can imagine, the costs of these events and the continued need for the high acuity care levels going forward are extreme.  John’s condition deprived him of his ability to work and Kathryn is forced to choose between being with John at the hospital and working to maintain her income and health insurance.  A loss of income and the large costs of John’s health care necessitates our need to request financial help.  Please consider donating what you can on John’s behalf.  Thank you.