Support Lori Howell's Road to Recovery

This GoFundMe is for Lori Howell (Linde)

Lori had a medical emergency on May 5th – Lori woke up early in the morning with an alarming amount of blood in her stool. She was taken to the emergency room. There, they performed a CT scan and discovered what looked like it could have been some sort of infection and blood clots in her intestines. That hospital was not equipped to handle the medical attention she needed so Lori was transferred by ambulance to the Marshfield Clinic/Hospital more than 2 hours away.

Upon arrival, Lori underwent exploratory surgery to see what exactly was going on. Unfortunately, the surgeons found a large portion of her small intestines were dead due to lack of blood flow due to the clots. This condition is called Mesenteric Venous Ischemia. The surgeons removed over 200 centimeters of her small intestines, leaving her with only a little over 100 centimeters left. There was still an iffy spot that they decided to leave in and in hopes, with the help of blood thinners, it would “pink up” and they wouldn’t have to remove any additional parts of her remaining intestines.

Lori was then put on a ventilator, and her stomach was left open to allow them to be able to go back in and check on the spot that they were unsure of. We were told that they were unsure if she would even make it through the night at that point, she was in rough shape. But she fought through the night and they were able to go back in the next day and check the portion that looked iffy. We were told that the spot was looking better but they wanted to give it a little more time to see if it would improve even more.

Also on Monday May 6th another doctor came to us and spoke about clots that were also found in the veins in her liver. They decided to do another procedure called TIPS. This procedure took a total of 5 hours to place a stent in the liver that connected the hepatic vein and the portal vein to redirect blood flow and also sucked out the clots in the veins of her liver.

Wednesday, May 8th, the surgeons went back into her stomach for the final time and were confident the iffy spot was healed enough to connect the intestines back together and close her up. Lori remained on the ventilator until Monday morning May 13th.

The surgeons told us that they have never seen a case this bad and most people don’t survive something like this – mostly because when they see this it’s usually clots in the arteries. In Lori’s case, she had clots in the veins but she was strong and pushed through.

Lori was finally able to travel home on May 21st.

There will be a long road of recovery, with getting her strength back and many doctors’ appointments which will continue to add to the financial burden already accrued.

We pray that this fund will help lift that burden off Lori’s shoulders as she moves forward with her recovery.