The Hurley boys baseball and Hurley girls softball teams in collaboration with the Niemi family have established a GoFundMe page to support Ryan Niemi as he continues to battle complications and receive treatment for his medical diagnosis in 2016. Ryan’s son Tadan is a current member of the Hurley baseball team and a 2023 Hurley graduate. Ryan’s daughter Kiera is a former Hurley graduate and softball player who continues to stay involved in the program. The GoFundMe page aims to help raise enough money to offset the cost of continued medical treatment and transportation. Ryan has strongly supported the Hurley School District and athletics and all local area sports programs, even while continuing to help coach through his medical diagnosis. The teams decided they wanted to do anything they could to support him, so please consider donating to this GoFundMe page. They have established a $20,000 goal.
The Niemi family shared the following information highlighting Ryan’s medical journey since 2016.
From Ryan Niemi:
On November 27, 2016, Ryan was diagnosed with IgA Nephropathy. “IgA nephropathy, also known as Berger's disease, is a kidney disease that occurs when an antibody called immunoglobulin A (IgA) builds up in your kidneys.” He was taken by ambulance to Wausau, WI, where he stayed for seven days. Ryan started dialysis at Divita Kidney Care in Woodruff, WI, receiving hemodialysis which he spent three years in Woodruff. He then transferred to peritoneal dialysis and switched to Fresenius Medical Care in Ashland, WI, in 2019. Ryan stayed on peritoneal dialysis until this past fall, and due to numerous infections and hernias, he had to come off and be placed on hemodialysis again. He spent nine days in Green Bay with a staph infection.
The many infections and hernias caused the bowel obstruction and put him in his current state. On March 28th, 2023, he went in for surgery for a bowel obstruction which totaled 6 hours in the operating room; upon release, he was put in ICU in critical condition, where he was placed on life support for a week. He remained in the ICU for an additional two weeks. They had to remove a blood clot from his right lung, and he developed pneumonia. Then, he went in for another surgery to repair hernias. Later on, they took him back for surgery to set up a new chest catheter. In the first week in the ICU, when the catheter was not working, he could not receive dialysis because of blood pressure issues and heart rate. Due to those complications, he retained a lot of fluid from being on life support. He then moved to a regular room in St. Mary’s Hospital and then spent two weeks there and started a little bit of physical therapy, waiting for approval to go to Miller Dwan Rehab Center, where he stayed for five more days until the day he was released. During those five days, it was extensive physical therapy. In Ryan's current state, he has physical therapy due to all the muscle loss during the ICU. Ryan had to learn how to walk all over again, and he didn’t have arm strength from the complications of the surgery. He is now doing physical therapy through Grand View three days a week on top of doing dialysis three days a week. Ryan has been on a transplant list through the University of Wisconsin-Madison for seven years, where he has made multiple trips for doctor's appointments and follow-up appointments. Due to this most recent hospital stay, his current state is pushing him back about six months until he is eligible to receive a kidney donation again.
From Keira and Tadan
Our father has been through a lot over the past few years, and at the end of February, he ended up getting sick. Our dad had to go to the hospital, where he then learned he had a bowel obstruction and it needed to be removed. He went into surgery; everything was good until they opened him up, and his blood pressure crashed. This caused the surgery to stop, and then he was placed into the ICU immediately and on life support. We left that day when he was admitted and stayed in Duluth for the next three days. We then returned home and made sure to keep up with the house and the chores. For over a month, he was in Duluth, and every Sunday, my grandparents took us to Duluth to go and see him. It was hard for us to see him in such a weak state. He has been our rock, and being unable to walk, move, come to games, and just go to work to do construction is hard on everyone.