Double Lung Transplant for John Shipman

On September 10th, John (our father), was rushed to the hospital via ambulance due to low oxygen saturation and tachycardia.

-Back in August he was diagnosed with Interstitial Lung Disease (ILD) and put on supplemental oxygen while we waited for more testing to be done to figure out the root-cause.

Unfortunately, his symptoms progressed much too quickly despite the use of the supplemental oxygen, antibiotics and steroids, and he ultimately ended up needing hospitalization. There were good days where we were able to play games like Yahtzee and listen to him play guitar *if you know him, you know how much he loves to play music* while his stats remained stable. However, there were many difficult days that led up to and have followed his receiving an explanatory diagnoses: Rheumatoid Arthritis that attacks the lungs. Once he found out what the cause was he was excited to learn that there are a few treatments available that could delay the onset of further symptoms and possibly even improve his quality of life. We were told that he would hopefully be out of the hospital in a couple weeks post-diagnosis. While waiting for his body to rid of infection and heal a pneumothorax, unfortunately John had a rough night where his oxygen saturation began to dip dangerously low for far too long and they had to make the decision to put him on a ventilator.

Fast forward a bit and Northwestern in Chicago begins reaching out to us to see about getting John a lung transplant. At this point the ventilator was no longer providing John enough support and we had to make another difficult decision to put him on ECMO (blood-oxygenation life-support).

Before he could get transferred to Northwestern, Nebraska Medicine accepted him last moment and transferred him up to Omaha on the morning of October 14th. John is currently undergoing extensive evaluations constantly to determine whether he is stable-enough and strong enough to proceed with a double lung transplant.

This is where we are at currently: He is heavily-sedated and on a paralytic to allow his body to properly rest during these evaluations. The Shipman family has incurred a number of medical debts throughout this period of time in addition to the expenses for visiting and staying close by. John was the main source of income, and so the financial burden has been almost as heavy as the emotional.

These are the current expenses that we could really use support for:

We appreciate anyone that has taken the time to read John's story regardless of your ability to donate or not. If anyone would be kind enough to share the link to this fundraiser, provide positive thoughts, prayers and good vibes (or whatever it is you believe in), it would be greatly appreciated by the whole family.

Thank you to everyone that has visited John and the family and provided emotional support during this time.

We will provide updates as we have more information.

Thanks again,

Katie and Christine <3