Postpartum Mom Fighting For Her Life Against COVID

Para ver esta historia en español, haga clic aquí .

Hilda Cruz Perez is 28 years old. She is beloved by her family- four year old Tayli, boyfriend Manuel, and Aunt Maria. On December 2nd she presented to the hospital as an emergency transfer with COVID pneumonia at 38 weeks pregnant. Her oxygen levels were dangerously low despite oxygen therapy and she required emergency intubation and delivery. Immediately prior to intubation, Hilda begged her team to save her life so she could live to meet her unborn son Dilan and get home to the light of her life, her 4 year old daughter Tayli.

Her baby Dilan was delivered that day and did beautifully. He went home with his Dad a few days later and continues to thrive. But Hilda has stayed critically ill. Two weeks into her course, she was requiring more and more ventilator support and the decision was made to transfer her to a facility that could perform something called ECMO. ECMO takes the blood out of your body and oxygenates and circulates it with a machine. Many large centers said they were unable to take Hilda for this life-saving care because, as an asylum seeker here in this country with permission, she did not qualify for Medicaid coverage. Our colleagues at Promedica Toledo Hospital performed an extraordinary act of kindness to take Hilda to initiate the ECMO process for what everyone thought would be a very short interval while we transferred her to a large academic center. 

It has been 7 days now and countless people are working to get Hilda to a large academic center capable of continuing her ECMO and possibly performing a lung transplant. Hilda is currently on the maximal amount of support we can give from the ventilator and the ECMO machine. For an academic center to take her, they will incur tremendous cost as Medicaid services sadly do not cover transplant. Hilda is part of a community that has been disproportionately effected by COVID and yet receives the most limited services for care. The extraordinary team of nurses, respiratory therapists, perfusionists, and physicians involved in her care recognize the desperate need for policy change, but Hilda does not have time to wait. We have identified an extraordinary academic center who has all the clinical resources to save her life- a center that has already successfully performed several COVID lung transplants and who has significant experience in running ECMO in COVID patients. That center is graciously willing to assume a huge portion of the cost for Hilda’s care, but Hilda and her family need your help. Please consider donating for Hilda’s care. Her family so desperately wants her to be able to secure this life saving treatment.