David and Ciara Dierking medical expenses

On December 23, 2023, David and Ciara drove to Pennsylvania with their 2 boys to visit family for Christmas. Their youngest son became sick and started to have severe pain in his neck. On Tuesday, December 26, Ciara took him to the emergency room. After some testing they found that he had coronavirus and strep. They also discussed the possibility of Meningitis.

When David came to join them in the emergency room, Ciara went back to the house to lie down as she was feeling ill. Two days later, on December 28, David's mother drove her to the emergency room.

David had been staying in the hospital room with his youngest son for the past 2 days. As soon as he heard Ciara was in the emergency room, he came down to see her. She already had a room full of doctors and nurses and was hooked up to breathing machines. David was told that she was a 10 out of 10 sick and that it was very very serious. She was immediately sent up to the ICU. It wasn't until one of the doctors was talking to David upstairs and said, "I trust by now you have read between the lines" and he saw that there was a chaplain in the room that he finally comprehended just how serious it was.

She ended up having influenza B, group A strep, severe pneumonia, and toxins got into her blood stream which sent her into toxic shock (sepsis). The doctors quickly realized where things were heading, so they decided to put her on ecmo (life support), which completely took over the heart and lung functions for her. Her organs ended up shutting down. This was a very traumatic experience. At one point, they were told that the rate of mortality was very high. Most of Ciara's and David's family quickly made long distance trips to be with them. A little while later the conference room was full of heartbroken people. They prayed and wept. In groups of two they went into her room and said their goodbyes. A little while later, one of the staff came and got David and Ciara's mom and said they were needed in the room immediately. As soon as they got to the room they could hear the defibrillator being used. Her heart had stopped beating and they tried shocking it to get it beating again. However, they were not successful. Thankfully they had already put her on ecmo, meaning, they could still keep her alive even with her heart not beating. It would just be a waiting game until it could start to heal.

The next day, it was decided that it would be best to transfer Colton from Lancaster General (where both he and Ciara were) to the Hershey children's hospital. The reasoning behind this is that hospital has an ICU specifically for children. The family was told that they may end up treating Colton the exact same way that he was being treated at Lancaster General, but due to Ciara's condition, they didn't want to take any chances. Should things worsen for Colton he would have quick access to the ICU and more specialized care.

After some further scans, it was determined that Colton had two abscesses of infection in his neck. He ended up having two surgeries to drain the fluid. For the first surgery they were able to access the abscess through his mouth. The second surgery required interventional radiology, as it was in a harder to reach spot (top of the spine next to the skull). The day after the second one was drained, it was a night and day difference in Colton's mood. He was laughing, moving around, playing. Inflammation from the abscess pushed one of his vertebrae over, which is the cause of his needing to wear the neck brace. His family was told he'd need to have that on for 4-6 weeks. He had a follow up appt. on Feb 6, and was finally able to have it removed!

It has been a long battle toward recovery. So many terrifying moments. Due to how bad her toxic shock was, she had to be placed on very high levels of blood pressure medicine. These meds narrow the blood vessels in order to increase pressure. Her family was told from the very beginning that her extremities would be at risk, due to lack of blood flow and oxygen, and that she would most likely lose them. But that was a sacrifice that had to be made in order to save her life. Her family was obviously most concerned about life. They rejoice that she is still alive.

It didn't take long before signs of dry gangrene started to show and they saw it quickly take over her arms and legs. The need for amputation become more and more clear. But since it didn't impose any risk on her life, there was no reason to rush to amputation. The goal was to give it enough time to get a clear mark of what would still be viable and what had died and would need to be removed. Any sign of wet gangrene however, would speed up the need to amputate, which is what ended up happening with the legs. Allowing an infection like that to continue, would put her life at risk. Shortly after her legs were amputated, she also had amputation surgery on her arms.

After this, she was transported by jet to a hospital in Charlotte. A few days after she arrived, they discovered that she had developed mucor, which is a very deadly fungus. This mucor was found in all 4 extremities, the site of the ecmo, and in her eye. Once again her family was told she had a very low chance of survival. They were told that the focus should be on keeping her comfortable. Her family continued to push forward and to fight as though nothing had changed. Ciara ended up having to go down for surgery every other day over the course of several weeks as the mucor caused more death of tissue in her arms and legs. With each surgery they had to remove more. The surgeries stopped once they felt confident they had gotten the last bit of mucor from her extremities and nothing remained but healthy tissue. Unfortunately her amputations all ended up above the knees and elbows. But she beat all the odds and survived the mucor! Due to it also being in her eye and the possibility of it having spread elsewhere, she remains on strong anti-fungals until August.

After 3 months in the ICU, she was moved to an LTACH (Long Term Acute Care Hospital), where they worked to get her off the ventilator and trach. She was in this facility for over a month and a half. She faced a number of challenges and setbacks and it was more challenging than the family had imagined, but she finally moved past that stage of her journey!

After that, she was transferred to an acute rehab facility where she is now undergoing a minimum of 3 hours a day of therapy. Her tentative discharge date is June 7th. But can possibly be extended if needed.

After this, the goal is to get her home. The family will be trained at the acute rehab facility on how to best care for her. Eventually she will be using prosthetics on all four limbs, but this will be a pretty long process.