Support for Sean Heeney's Accident

On May 18th, 2022, while driving home, a driver mistakenly pulled out in front of Sean and collided with his car. Because of this accident, he ended up in intensive care for 6 weeks. He had two perforations in his small intestine, a “shredded” colon (the surgeon's words), internal bleeding, a collapsed lung, a badly bruised heart, went into cardiac arrest, had multiple surgical complications that caused the repaired intestine to become detached, a cracked sternum, broken ribs, a tracheotomy, and a ruptured stomach artery that led to massive internal bleeding and required the transfusion of several liters of blood. Some of the complications that arose were most likely due to the fact that Sean was diagnosed with a form of muscular dystrophy in 2013 called myotonic dystrophy. This added an extra layer to the trauma, surgery and recovery. He will need a couple more surgeries in the coming months so we are preparing for those as well.

After all this, he's still here to tell his story.

We had just moved from Illinois to Florida, and unfortunately, Sean was in between jobs and didn't have health insurance. This fundraiser will help pay for his medical bills and supplies for things like his colostomy bag and wound care supplies. If you are interested in how the situation ended up as bad as it did, we will outline most of the story below. We thank anyone from the bottom of our hearts who have prayed for him or has given well wishes.

At the time of the accident, the extreme pressure from the seatbelt due to the impact destroyed a portion of his colon, specifically the region of the colon called the "sigmoid colon". The surgeon told us that it was "shredded" from the trauma. This portion of the intestine had to be removed completely. The surgery to reconnect his intestine after they removed the damaged section was supposed to be a fairly routine surgery (as serious as the injury is), but in the middle of the very first night the sutures didn’t hold and the two sections of the intestine completely detached from each other. This caused Sean a life-threatening amount of internal bleeding and filled his abdominal cavity with blood and fluids. He had to be rushed back into emergency surgery and opened for a second time from his chest down to below his belly button. Instead of trying to reattach the intestine again, they performed an ostomy operation in which the surgeons created an opening through the skin and muscle on the side of his abdomen and brought the large intestine through the hole that they created there. The exposed large intestine sitting outside of the abdomen is known as the "stoma". A colostomy bag is placed over the stoma and that is how bodily waste is then disposed of instead of traveling down the typical path.

The next thing the surgeons had to do was to make sure no bacteria from the ruptured colon would lead to sepsis or other infection. During their first "washout" of his abdomen, they did find several types of bacteria including E. coli and an immediate closure was not going to be possible. This led to several washouts over two weeks until Sean's abdomen was sterile enough to attempt to close. During these weeks Sean was fully sedated and intubated with full breathing assistance from a ventilator.

A washout might be what you would imagine it would be. They go into your abdominal cavity and clean out any fluid, excrement, blood or bacteria that might have drained out of the intestine during the detachment. It is no simple or easy procedure and they have to do this as many times as necessary to ensure no infections occur. If they were to close up his incision too early with bacteria in the abdominal cavity, that could be fatal. At the same time, the body doesn’t like to be open too long (like the period of two weeks he was) so it was a balancing act for the surgeons. For the two weeks that he was sedated, his abdomen was left open at a width of over eight inches. After the washouts were complete they realized since his abdomen had been open for so long and so wide, his abdominal muscles had shortened over time. They tried to close him back up with staples but that was no longer an option and they had to think of a different way to close the incision. They devised a method where they were going to close the wound over several weeks with a wound vac. This is a machine that created a constant sealed suction, essentially healing the wound from the inside out, beginning with the innermost layers of the tissue. This process was the next step to at least closing the wound.

The day finally came when the many washouts and waiting were over and they were able to take him off the sedation. The tube could finally be removed from his throat and we were finally able to communicate with him. He was still moderately sedated and on a lot of pain medication but it was still amazing to be able to finally communicate again. The afternoon visiting hours ended for the day and we left for lunch and told him we would be back to see him again for the evening visit. When we arrived back at the hospital a few hours later, a nurse brought us into a room and informed us he had vomited a couple of times while we were gone but there was nothing to worry about. He was able to get the vomit up and out, and they didn’t believe any had entered his lungs. This can potentially be very dangerous when someone is partially sedated and on pain medication due to the risk of asphyxiation (when the inhalation of vomit into the lungs directly blocks the flow of air).

Within minutes of her telling us this, he vomited again and this time he did end up asphyxiating on his vomit. He couldn’t breathe for minutes and ended up going into cardiac arrest. A code blue was called over the intercom while we waited in the waiting room. He had no pulse for a period of time, chest compressions were performed and after being defibrillated he was revived. We don’t specifically know how long his heart had stopped, and I’m not sure we ever do want to know, but they did bring him back to life that day.

To prevent future asphyxiation incidents he was given a tracheotomy which would allow him to breathe through a tube from his throat. This was scary to see but we knew it was temporary.

Up until this point life had seemed like a living nightmare and it seemed as if moment by moment we didn’t know if he was going to make it or not.

Unfortunately, the story wasn’t over there. In the midst of all of this going on, unbeknownst to the surgeons or any of us, an ulcer had been eating away at a spot in the lining of Sean’s stomach. The location of this ulcer was right on top of a large artery in the stomach, which eventually caused the artery to burst. My brother Patrick was in the room visiting Sean at the time and said Sean was complaining of a bowling ball feeling in his stomach. Pat said he then noticed Sean’s blood oxygen on the vitals screen fall point by point every second. The team of doctors and nurses were notified, rushed in, and asked Pat to leave. We waited in the waiting room and didn’t hear anything for an hour. They finally came out to say he had made it. They explained to us the bowling ball feeling in Sean’s stomach was the burst artery filling his stomach with blood and they had to perform emergency surgery to clamp the artery closed and perform a blood transfusion adding liters of blood back into Sean's system.

This finally seemed to be the last major setback.

Over the next coming weeks, his vitals slowly seemed to improve. His bruised heart had improved and the cardiologist informed us that it was back to 100%. The blood levels (like the white blood cell count) and other levels that were being monitored were improving and we were seeing the Sean we knew slowly coming back.

He spent a total of 6 weeks in intensive care which the hospital said was one of the longest periods they had seen someone remain in the ICU and live to tell about it. The head surgeon said every single thing that could have gone wrong did but that tide felt like it was finally turning.

Sean then remained at the recovery section of the hospital for an additional 2 weeks where things continued to improve. The first time he walked by himself was a celebration for all of us, including the staff. it was a great moment at the hospital. The picture above is Sean with me and my brother Pat during his first time outside in about 6 weeks. That was also a great moment.

All in all, he was in the hospital for exactly 60 days.

To put that into perspective, a young man not wearing a helmet wrecked his motorcycle near the hospital we were at and was thought to be dead at the scene. He was airlifted to the same trauma center where Sean was and actually ended up in the room right next to Sean. Thankfully they managed to save his life and he was out of the ICU in 1 week's time.

Sean was there for 6 weeks.

He had to wear the wound vac for weeks after leaving the hospital to fully close the wound. His last day of wearing the wound vac was a huge relief (it was fairly loud and cumbersome to walk around with).

He will need the colostomy bag for about 1 year until they can reattach the two segments of the sigmoid colon for the second time.

He was also very relieved to finish his intense daily 6-week outpatient physical therapy. It was tough and was like learning to stand, walk and do simple things we take for granted all over again.

Sean’s journey isn’t over and there will be other surgeries in the future. The next surgery will be the one to reconnect his colon for the second time. Later on, his second surgery will be the reconstruction of his abdominal wall. The two sides of the abdominal wall still aren't connected and he technically has one large hernia at the moment. This disconnection of the two sides of the abdominal wall is basically from the number of times the incision had to be made, the size of the incision, and the length of time the incision had to remain open during those several weeks.

The important thing is a 100% recovery is expected and that is something we are truly grateful for.

We got to know Sean's surgeons pretty well and they referred to him as their miracle patient. The one head surgeon told Sean "you're the reason we do what we do".

For what it’s worth Sean never showed one moment of weakness or despair. Just bravery and compliance. Thankfully he doesn’t remember much about the whole experience, we've learned that's the magic of some of these medications they have you on.

We were there every day throughout those 8 weeks. While sitting in an ICU for 6 weeks you see a lot of people come and go, and unfortunately see a lot of people that don't make it… but you also sure do learn a lot. You do a lot of reflecting on the preciousness of life there.

The last unfortunate part of the story is that Sean was in between jobs, as we had just moved from Illinois to Florida and he didn’t have health insurance at the time of the accident. He was also denied disability by the state of Florida, which we couldn't believe.

We are confident things will be great again, but sometimes life can just throw a curveball (or two it seems), it’s just how we react to those curveballs and what we do to overcome that adversity that matters.

A really, really big thank you to those who prayed for him during those times. We believe it had a big impact on his recovery.

And of course, any and all updates on Sean will always be posted here when we get them.