It all started with 2 small heart attacks at home. From there Tom’s life changed drastically and we almost lost him.
Jan, 30th Tom was taken to ER for shortness of breath and chest pain. Fremont Hospital admitted him saying he had a heart attack. They kept him over the weekend and on Feb. 2nd Tom was scheduled for a heart catheter and possibly 1-2 stents.
While doing the procedure all his valves were blocked (calcification) worse than what all test showed. During the procedure Tom had a massive heart attack.
Fremont was struggling to keep him stable and the decision was made to life flight Tom to Omaha Methodist.
At this point Tom’s heart is very damaged, valves are all blocked or not working and lungs filled with fluid. Tom was barely alive by the time he arrived in Omaha. We were told he was going to need emergency open heart surgery.
The Drs evaluated Tom and realized his heart was severely damaged to do surgery. His heart needs to rest and heal. So he was incubated, heavenly sedated and put on an ECMO. Methodist doesn’t specialize with ECMO’s so he was now transferred to Nebraska Medical. He’s even at NE Medical since 2/2 living off machines.
Seeing Tom like this is the hardest thing I’ve ever had to go through. Just when I didn’t think it could get any worse Tom has a stroke followed by several seizures.
The surgeon decided to hold off on his heart surgery and to let his heart rest on the ECMO.
Until Tom gets off the ECMO he isn’t able to do an MRI to see the damage the stroke did to his brain. Every time the nurses turn down his sedation to wake Tom up he starts to have seizures.
Everything depends on Tom waking up and getting off the ECMO machine. We have to get the MRI done before moving forward to repair his heart. The seizures we were told should hopefully go away in the next 3 to 5 days.
Tom is still in critical condition in ICU. A surgeon today mentioned he’s one of the worst patients here right now.
It’s a long waiting game with a long journey ahead yet to go. Once everything is over Tom is going to need some pretty extensive therapy.
ALL MONEY RAISED WILL GO TOWARDS TOM ‘s MEDICAL EXPENSES, MISSED WAGES AND BILLS.
ANY AMOUNT YOU CAN DONATE WILL BE GREATLY APPRECIATED!!
We are blessed and grateful to have a lot of family supporting and praying for Tom. I can’t thank you all enough! There’s no way I could get through this alone without you!!