Help Jacob Jarvis Overcome His Fight

Jacob Jarvis (left) is a brave and kind soul. He has bravely battled Duchenne's Muscular Dystrophy but has run into issues with his respiratory/pulmonary system. Jacob has been in Children's Hospital for several weeks now fighting his hardest. The number of people who have come forward to offer support to Jacob and his family has been overwhelming. The purpose of this fund raiser is to allow people to donate and support Jacob and his family with the expenses of this extended hospital stay. Jacob and his family live in Columbus and Jacob is currently in Cincinnati. As you can imagine, this causes a lot of strain and expense on the family. Below are more details about Jacob's current condition. Thank you in advance for supporting this amazing young man and this amazing family!

Jacob Jarvis has Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy (DMD). DMD is a muscle wasting disease.

At first, boys with DMD begin to lose strength in major muscle groups such as legs and lose

ambulation (ability to walk) in the early teen years. But all our organs (Heart, Lungs, Kidney’s,

etc) are muscles too and lose strength over time as well. This means that breathing becomes

more difficult, Heart pumps get weaker over time, arms get weaker, and in general the entire

body gets weaker.

Jacob began this latest medical hospitalization on May 1 with difficulty breathing. He first went

to the ER but was transferred to the PICU at Nationwide Childrens.

Through testing, it was revealed that Jacob had Pneumonia in his right lung. 3 days later, Saturday night, Jacob’s right lung collapsed as did most of bodily stats (HR,

Pulse Oxy, BP). The alarms went off and caused a rush of doctors and medical professionals to

flood the room with all kinds of medical care. After Jacob was stabilized the medical staff

intubated (inserted a breathing tube) Jacob along with a feeding tube. From that trauma

Jacob’s body needed extra support and care. Since Intubated Jacob could not talk since the vocal cords were impeded.

Over the next 6 days Jacob respiratory stats slowly increased.

Jacob did have a few medical hiccups (irregular heart rates, low BP, etc..) along the way but

started healing.

On Monday May 20th in the morning Jacob was extubated (Breathing tube removed) and began breathing using a Bi-Pap mask.

Late Monday night, Jacob’s breathing became stressed. Medical staff tried several different measures to keeps Jacob breathing going. But after 2-3 hours of unsuccessfully helping Jacob breathe, it was decided to re-intubate him. Basically 18 hours later he was back on the breathing tube.

Thursday May 23 it was determined that Jacob needed support of his regular Neuromuscular team at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital. On Saturday morning Jacob was Flown from Columbus

to Cincinnati.

Jacob’s hospital journey still continues and while we do know how Jacob will heal, we have be

told this process could continue for 4-8 weeks or longer. Meaning Jacob could be in hospitals for

months healing.