As we head into fall, we also head into cold and respiratory virus season. While most people recover without serious problems, some viral infections can lead to life-threatening pneumonia that requires the most advanced life support available.
That’s what happened to 41-year-old mom Megan Chandler, who thought she was just fighting a stubborn cold.
Like so many moms, Chandler put everyone else first. Her job. Her two kids. Game days. So, when a cough wouldn’t go away, she kept going.
“I was just always continuing to go, go, go. Even if I didn’t feel well,” Chandler recalled.
Until one day when her son found her collapsed on the floor.
“I can’t get up. Like my legs, like wouldn’t allow me to, like stand,” Chandler said.
Doctors discovered pneumonia. Her lungs were failing.
For Chandler’s family, the news was devastating.
“They told us, you know, this is it, you know, she’s going to die today,” Chandler’s brother, Tommy Pasque, told Ivanhoe.
But ECMO, a machine that can temporarily do the work of failing lungs, gave Chandler’s lungs time to heal and her family something they thought they were losing: hope.
“ECMO is able to take the blood out of somebody’s body, put oxygen into the blood, and put it back into the body,” said Dr. Chakradhar Kotaru, a pulmonary and critical care specialist at HCA HealthONE Aurora. “I think there’s a high chance that she would not have survived this (without ECMO).”
ECMO is reserved for some of the sickest patients when the heart or lungs can no longer provide enough oxygen or blood flow to keep the body alive. It’s used for severe lung failure, cardiogenic shock after some heart attacks, and complex heart surgeries.
ECMO gained national attention during the COVID-19 pandemic when it helped keep some critically ill patients alive long enough for their lungs to recover.
When Chandler finally woke up, she had IVs everywhere, a trach in her mouth and couldn’t speak.
She had to learn how to breathe, to eat, to walk. After nearly two months, she finally went home. Today, she has one message for anyone who thinks they don’t have time to see a doctor.
“No matter how young you are, you can get very sick very fast,” she said.