Sara and Santana --
I was scrolling through Facebook when I caught a glimpse of a photo from my friend Sara. It was Sara holding her son’s hand., with an ambulance cot behind the bed. That wasn’t what caught my attention. The picture didn’t show his face, just their hands and a small glance at his chest—where I saw what looked exactly like a Ballard closed suction catheter.
My heart stopped for a second. He’s intubated? How did this happen?
Sara is a friend of mine from nursing school. She was the single mother of twin girls, a hard worker, a member of a small group of people that though we have scattered across the country, are like honorary sisters for life. We went our separate ways and she later had Santana AKA “Tana” and another set of twin boys after that. Sara’s the kind of mother that her love shines through her children. Their photos and stories appear on my feed, and it makes you just smile.
In November, Tana and one of the twin boys tested positive for COVID. They began to recover, did not have serious respiratory issues, and things seemed like they would resolve. But Tana didn’t quite make that turn.
In late December he was admitted to UTMB, a level one trauma center where Sara works, in Galveston. He was diagnosed with MIS-C, a rare but serious complication of COVID in children. There was the occasional case mentioned in the news, but I didn’t know much about it. The good news was Tana seemed ok in pics December 31st, watching his tablet, frowning at the camera.
Jan 2nd, Sara posted Tana was being moved to the PICU, pediatric intensive care unit, at UTMB. A few hours later, she posted that pic and that he was being transferred to another PICU in Houston, at a Children’s hospital. And he was intubated. In a few hours, things had gone very wrong. I got in touch with Sara immediately and she told me that things were not good. Tana had developed heart failure and been started on Milrinone (a drug that increases cardiac output) and was not making urine, indicating his kidneys were also in big trouble. His blood pressure dropped dangerously low, and an epinephrine infusion was started to raise it. His white blood cell count and creatinine levels spiked. Multiple lines for intravenous access and monitoring where started—a large bore intravenous catheter, an arterial line, nasogastric tube, Foley catheter. They started more medications—insulin, Lasix (a potent diuretic to pull fluid off). Antibiotics. IV immunoglobulin treatment. Steroids. Anakinra, for inflammation. Heparin, to prevent blood clots.
What MIS-C is—a severe inflammatory condition that affects multiple organ systems. What it can do—cause multiple organ systems to fail. Which is what is happening to Tana.
Sunday Tana held firm through the day. He began to make tribe, and yesterday afternoon his white blood count dropped (WHICH IS GOOD) as well as his creatinine. The epinephrine drip was weaned, but then Sara texted me his blood pressure dropped dangerously low again, and it was restarted.
I called some friends in our group to keep them posted—my best friend, Erin, said I know it’s serious but I didn’t know it was that serious. What can we do?
As much as I’d like to show up in Houston, there’s nothing I can do. Sara’s family is helping care for the other children, we can’t join her at Tana’s bedside, all we can really do is pray and hope and listen.
And fundraise. Look, I hate asking for money. It sucks we have a society where a child falls sick and we have to beg for money to keep the family afloat. I would do it all myself if I could, take care of the sick child, hold the mother up, and pay every damn thing off I could. If you just pray for Tana and Sara, or send good cosmic vibes from the universe or whatever positivity you can send her way, that’s enough. If you’d like to do a little more, there’s a GoFundMe link as well.
Thank you for reading. I will continue posting updates on Twitter (@lerinjo).