Loving on the Risells while Kaylee fights to heal

March 2024:

My daughter Kaylee is currently on life support in the PICU at UVA after a nasty bout with the flu ravaged her already weakened lungs and caused every complication imaginable.

She was brought to ER in the wee hours of the morning on March 3rd. By the time she was stabilized, they discovered that she had a collapsed lung, a respiratory infection, tissue damage throughout her body, her heart was failing, and she had a bacterial infection in her blood that was causing her body to go into septic shock.

The following day, doctors confirmed that she had also developed a condition where her immune system being overly-activated was causing it to attack itself, actually further damaging her body.

Kaylee was placed on VA ECMO, with tubes going directly into her heart to cycle her blood out of her body to remove any CO2 and oxidize it again. Her blood then runs through a dialysis machine that filters it and removes excess fluid before it can be returned to her body. She's on these two machines, a ventilator, a feeding tube, and a dozen medications for sedation, pain, and blood pressure and anticoagulation.

We have made it a week since the start of this nightmare with small steps forward but we have a long, scary road ahead of us.

Kaylee is one of the sweetest people you'll ever meet. She celebrated her 12th birthday with a friend sleepover in February, she is the world's best big sister, and there's no end to her thoughtfulness or playful sass.

Her siblings are 9 and 7, and they are struggling to understand why their sister can't come home and why mama has to spend so much time with her and not with them right now. (Thankfully, grandparents are staying with us and are jumping into this role to make sure the younger two are comforted, keeping busy, and finding a new normal and to be with Kaylee so that I can split my time between the hospital and spending it with the other kids.)

We are probably looking at a month's stay in PICU at the *minimum* and I don't know how we're going to financially do this in the long-term.

Her doctors have said that she's about as sick as someone can possibly be, and while she's getting phenomenal care here, there's a very real possibility that her body is just too weak and damaged to recover.

Please consider offering up any encouragement or support, monetary or not, to help ease the scariest time of our lives and allow me to keep my focus on my three kiddos as Kaylee fights to beat the odds. ♥️