Vern Schirpke and The Aftermath of Covid 19

Not the early retirement he dreamed of.

On April 3, 2021, Vern was admitted to the local hospital with Covid 19. He spent a week there while his condition worsened. He was then taken by ambulance to a larger hospital; he wasn’t there even a day. They knew they needed to get him on an ECMO machine (Extracorporeal membrane oxygenation, which allows the blood to "bypass" the heart and or lungs, allowing organs to rest and heal.), or he wasn’t going to survive.

There are only 6000 of these machines in the entire U.S. Only 264 hospitals have one. Froedtert Hospital in Milwaukee happened to have one, and it was available. Remember, during Covid no visitors were allowed in the hospital. His wife was told he wouldn’t survive if they didn’t get him there as fast as they could. She didn’t even know what ECMO was; most people wouldn’t have. She authorized his transport and the procedure that would connect him to this machine. She knew Vern was a fighter.

He was in quarantine for 28 days; no one could be there with him. His wife was updated only when the doctors were able – the nurses offering her what they could. She learned from these updates that he was not only on ECMO but also a ventilator – the ECMO wasn’t keeping up enough for his worsening lung condition – his lungs had turned to “cement.” it was because of this that the right side of his heart stopped working properly. They needed to change to an ECMO for both heart and lung function. At one point, she was told they were adding a second oxygenator; one was not enough to pull the C02 out of his lungs. They said they had only tried this procedure one other time – that person survived a day. They needed a miracle.

Someone is on ECMO usually until the underlying cardiac or lung problem is resolved or improved enough to be taken off. Typically, this is around five days, but in some cases, ECMO support continues for up to 25 to 30 days. Long-term ECMO support increases the chances of complications – over 100 days is, indeed, rare. After eight weeks, Vern was still on the ECMO machine. They had done a Tracheotomy; he was still on the ventilator. They were now finding blood clots around the ECMO tubes. They started blood thinners, but there was no guarantee they would be dissolved before one could break off. Then, there would be nothing they could do. The clots were resistant to the meds they tried. Again, he needed a miracle. Vern’s birthday came and went while he was in a drug-induced coma – he turned 54.

Over the next couple of months, there were ups and downs, cardiac arrests, and collapsed lungs, but also days that looked encouraging. Vern was on the ECMO machine for four long months – well over 100 days. If you can imagine an x-ray of the lungs, anything that shows up as white is usually the problem - like pneumonia. The dark area is where the lungs are clear. When Vern’s wife Karin was shown an x-ray of Vern’s lungs, there was only one tiny dot that was dark – one small spot that was clear. He now had pulmonary fibrosis. (Pulmonary fibrosis is a lung disease that causes scarring and thickening of the tissue around the air sacs, making breathing difficult and reducing oxygen intake)

Of course, the assault on his body affected other organs as well. During the course of several surgical procedures (being hooked up to an ECMO machine in itself has major risks) he suffered cardiac arrest and had to be revived more than once; this, of course, caused damage to his heart. The right side of his diaphragm was paralyzed. He was weak; breathing was laborious. He physically could not feed himself; he could stand for no more than a second, he had lost a considerable amount of weight, and he couldn’t speak more than a word or two. But he was a fighter. When he was released from Froedtert, he and his wife were told that none of the doctors thought he would ever survive what he’d been through.

Still over 100 miles from home, Vern entered another care facility, another hospital that had a wing for specialty care. However, they were not equipped to handle the J/G tube, which helped drain fluid and gases. The tube was left in, but the bag was removed, and the tube was capped off. However, because of his paralyzed diaphragm and inefficient lungs, with no release, he developed pneumonia. But Vern fought even harder and pulled through once again. They wanted to release him to a nursing home, but he just wanted to get home. They told him that to go home, he would have to be able to do certain things. Vern’s response “give me a goal, I’ll get there.”

As if all he’d been through wasn’t enough, there was indeed more. When they finally got the okay to go home, they found out there was no home to go to. Not too long before getting sick, they had had a new roof put on the house. There had been a section of ridge cap that had been neglected, and rain had gotten into the ceiling and then down into the walls. It was discovered and added, but then shortly after, with Vern in the hospital and his wife staying as near him as she could, the house was closed up for those seven and a half months. When Vern’s kids came in to tidy the house up for his homecoming, it was discovered that the closed-up house, with the wet wall and fieldstone basement, was full of mold. The kitchen cabinets were taken down and all drywall removed in hopes of re-drywalling, but it was soon discovered the mold was through the ceiling and throughout the entire house. There was no way he could be in that environment.

A two-room apartment adjacent to the house had been added for Vern’s parents’ years earlier, and though it was not untouched, the kids were able to clean up enough for Vern and his wife to live in. So, by sealing up the main house and doing some major cleaning in the small two-room apartment, Vern could finally come home. It was November 22, 2021.

However, this was only the beginning of the very long road to recovery. He was sent home to start life tethered to an oxygen machine. Although the last few weeks of his stay in the hospital specialty care unit were spent trying to strengthen his body, which had been lying in a bed for six months, not a lot of progress could be made with diseased lungs and a weakened heart.

And then what? He came home, but he’d been released with no scheduled follow-up, no rehabilitation, no physical therapy sessions. They had returned home to find that no medical provider in the area was willing to deal with his many complicated conditions.

With his scarred lungs, he was unable to do much of anything; he, of course, lost his job and had to purchase Cobra insurance. He had some disability insurance, but we all know how costly a hospital stay is, not to mention the procedures he was having done. Everyone thinks people with bad Covid got some compensation from the federal government – they did not.

Eventually, together, Vern and his wife were able to figure out exercises to strengthen his muscles, learn how to talk, and even walk. He now does physical therapy once a week, though it won’t help his lungs, which are working only at 30%, but it will strengthen his body. They do not venture away from home other than to get him to physical therapy. They have to be very careful with visitors – in his condition, even a cold would be dangerous. For a family with six kids and nine grandchildren who were together often, this new reality is an emotional struggle that followed a seven-month nightmare.

They are still living in the small two-room apartment. Their home and all that was in it is lost to the mold and, at some point, will need to be torn down—the insurance limit for mold damage was only ten thousand, not enough even to cover the cost of destruction.

Vern is still working as hard as he can. His first goal was to survive, and his second was to come home; now, he hopes to be strong enough to be a recipient of a double lung transplant. To reach that goal, he again has to meet certain criteria. He was told he had to be able to walk a certain distance. His response was, how far? We hope Vern will soon be on the list to receive that transplant. When he does, it will be another fight to survive and a costly one.

A double-lung transplant will once again take him far from home, but not just while he’s in the hospital; even once he’s released, he will need to stay near that hospital for at least three months. Recovery time from a lung transplant is a minimum of six months.

The anti-rejection drugs, even with Medicare, will run 1800.00 a month. He will need to take the medication for the rest of his life.

Vern’s a fighter; Vern needs another miracle, and now Vern needs your help. He would never ask for himself; it’s not his way, but with past medical bills, future medical bills, and the cost of tearing down a mold-ridden house, one which he can not go home to once he has a lung transplant, we’re hoping to raise enough to see him through this ordeal.

He no longer dreams of early retirement; he dreams of getting on a list for a new pair of lungs, he dreams of surviving that operation, he dreams of his body not rejecting them so he can once again enjoy the simple pleasures of being with his family and watching his grandchildren grow up. He dreams of maybe being the longest-living double lung transplant survivor. He dreams of living and being able to breathe.