Help Breast Cancer Survivor turned COVID Warrior
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Breast Cancer Survivor turned COVID Warrior – mother of 3 battling for her life needs our support!
Rebecca (Becky) Coleman, an essential frontline worker from Centerville, OH, and a loving mother of 3, was admitted to the Hospital on 1/5/21 with shortness of breath and COVID-19 symptoms. After a few days with increasing breathing difficulties they moved her to the ICU. After 5 days of trying various medications unsuccessfully, she was intubated, put on the ventilator, and heavily sedated. In under a week, COVID had seized control of her body very quickly. Typical of so many COVID patients, she was unable to see her family and they were unable to see her. At one point, Ken was told she had around a 5% chance of survival. It has been gut-wrenching watching our brother Ken and his 3 kids (Kelsey, Brandon, and Josh) dealing with the fear of losing her.
After 14 days, things seemed to be progressing for what appeared the better as Becky was no longer contagious, and the family was finally allowed to see her. Ken, a devoted and loving husband wasted no time and has now been living every night in the hospital to be close to her talking incessantly to her. When friends sent a little gas and meal money, Ken, being incredibly selfless, instead used the money to feed dinner to two different shifts of hospital workers who have tirelessly kept her alive. During the day, he stays for the doctor updates and then leaves to do some work and then to return to catch doctors in the early evening.
Becky, has been heavily sedated, actually medically paralyzed for much of the last 5 weeks. She developed a serious case of ARDS from the COVID virus. She is hooked up to life support, has a feeding tube and an enormous volume of medications and monitors. During the last few weeks, it has been up and down with good days and bad days. She has opened her eyes a few times bringing much hope to her despairing family and friends. Unfortunately, both lungs collapsed in separate events requiring chest tubes to be surgically implanted to drain air/fluids from her chest. She also caught an infection which needed to be treated with antibiotics. Her blood pressure has some crazy swings requiring interventions. At one point, they feared a stroke and did CT scans of the brain and chest. Then the latest punch to our fighting warrior, is the doctors discovered that they had inadvertently ruptured her silicone breast implant when inserting the chest tube (a week before). The implant had been inserted after her double mastectomy years ago during her Breast Cancer battle.
As you might imagine, her children are struggling to cope with the situation and missing Becky tremendously. Becky and Ken’s dogs (Max and Zeke) are incredibly sad not having mom and dad to cuddle and are constantly looking for Becky to walk through the door.
The plan of action, once she is stable enough, is to do a tracheotomy which will allow her to move to a long-term acute care facility where they will work on weaning her off the vent and hopefully reversing Trach and PEG (feeding tube), etc. assuming her lungs are not too damaged. She has not moved in almost 6 weeks. The road to recovery will be tremendously hard, painful, emotional and financially draining. She will require pulmonary rehab, physical therapy, occupational therapy, cognitive therapy, speech therapy and probably significant emotional support.
Becky has worked hard to beat the odds to stay alive. Her warrior strength battled and defeated breast cancer 8 years ago and she will beat this as well, but she needs our help. Please continue to pray and consider to help fund her medical bills.
- 6+ weeks in ICU ($4,000 minimum plus unknown amount of any doctors or services that were considered out of network)
- Anticipated therapy costs above what insurance will cover. It is anticipated that recovery will take months starting in a long-term acute facility graduating to a rehab/skilled nursing facility and then hopefully home with some degree of home care/out-patient therapy. Insurance limits number of therapy sessions to 20 in a given calendar year. She will exceed that amount very quickly as she tries to learn how to breathe on her own and walk and talk after weeks of not doing either. Preliminary estimates of therapy services not covered by insurance will easily exceed $36,000.
- Missing income - Becky will be unable to work for quite a long time. She will be eligible for unemployment pay but this will not cover her full income as a hard-working server, which is highly tip based. This missing income is estimated at $10,000+.
- It is also very likely she will require several medications for a long time that will probably exceed insurance coverage.
- We also hope and pray (and are assuming for now) that she does not need inpatient facility care beyond what her insurance coverage allows. We will not know about this for awhile.
Please consider helping support Becky, our courageous COVID warrior and loving mother of 3! Any small amount would be helpful and much appreciated. And, if you cannot afford to donate, no worries please just help by praying for her recovery.
Rebecca (Becky) Coleman, an essential frontline worker from Centerville, OH, and a loving mother of 3, was admitted to the Hospital on 1/5/21 with shortness of breath and COVID-19 symptoms. After a few days with increasing breathing difficulties they moved her to the ICU. After 5 days of trying various medications unsuccessfully, she was intubated, put on the ventilator, and heavily sedated. In under a week, COVID had seized control of her body very quickly. Typical of so many COVID patients, she was unable to see her family and they were unable to see her. At one point, Ken was told she had around a 5% chance of survival. It has been gut-wrenching watching our brother Ken and his 3 kids (Kelsey, Brandon, and Josh) dealing with the fear of losing her.
After 14 days, things seemed to be progressing for what appeared the better as Becky was no longer contagious, and the family was finally allowed to see her. Ken, a devoted and loving husband wasted no time and has now been living every night in the hospital to be close to her talking incessantly to her. When friends sent a little gas and meal money, Ken, being incredibly selfless, instead used the money to feed dinner to two different shifts of hospital workers who have tirelessly kept her alive. During the day, he stays for the doctor updates and then leaves to do some work and then to return to catch doctors in the early evening.
Becky, has been heavily sedated, actually medically paralyzed for much of the last 5 weeks. She developed a serious case of ARDS from the COVID virus. She is hooked up to life support, has a feeding tube and an enormous volume of medications and monitors. During the last few weeks, it has been up and down with good days and bad days. She has opened her eyes a few times bringing much hope to her despairing family and friends. Unfortunately, both lungs collapsed in separate events requiring chest tubes to be surgically implanted to drain air/fluids from her chest. She also caught an infection which needed to be treated with antibiotics. Her blood pressure has some crazy swings requiring interventions. At one point, they feared a stroke and did CT scans of the brain and chest. Then the latest punch to our fighting warrior, is the doctors discovered that they had inadvertently ruptured her silicone breast implant when inserting the chest tube (a week before). The implant had been inserted after her double mastectomy years ago during her Breast Cancer battle.
As you might imagine, her children are struggling to cope with the situation and missing Becky tremendously. Becky and Ken’s dogs (Max and Zeke) are incredibly sad not having mom and dad to cuddle and are constantly looking for Becky to walk through the door.
The plan of action, once she is stable enough, is to do a tracheotomy which will allow her to move to a long-term acute care facility where they will work on weaning her off the vent and hopefully reversing Trach and PEG (feeding tube), etc. assuming her lungs are not too damaged. She has not moved in almost 6 weeks. The road to recovery will be tremendously hard, painful, emotional and financially draining. She will require pulmonary rehab, physical therapy, occupational therapy, cognitive therapy, speech therapy and probably significant emotional support.
Becky has worked hard to beat the odds to stay alive. Her warrior strength battled and defeated breast cancer 8 years ago and she will beat this as well, but she needs our help. Please continue to pray and consider to help fund her medical bills.
- 6+ weeks in ICU ($4,000 minimum plus unknown amount of any doctors or services that were considered out of network)
- Anticipated therapy costs above what insurance will cover. It is anticipated that recovery will take months starting in a long-term acute facility graduating to a rehab/skilled nursing facility and then hopefully home with some degree of home care/out-patient therapy. Insurance limits number of therapy sessions to 20 in a given calendar year. She will exceed that amount very quickly as she tries to learn how to breathe on her own and walk and talk after weeks of not doing either. Preliminary estimates of therapy services not covered by insurance will easily exceed $36,000.
- Missing income - Becky will be unable to work for quite a long time. She will be eligible for unemployment pay but this will not cover her full income as a hard-working server, which is highly tip based. This missing income is estimated at $10,000+.
- It is also very likely she will require several medications for a long time that will probably exceed insurance coverage.
- We also hope and pray (and are assuming for now) that she does not need inpatient facility care beyond what her insurance coverage allows. We will not know about this for awhile.
Please consider helping support Becky, our courageous COVID warrior and loving mother of 3! Any small amount would be helpful and much appreciated. And, if you cannot afford to donate, no worries please just help by praying for her recovery.
Organizer and beneficiary
Debbie Coleman Merrick
Organizer
New Providence, NJ
Ken Coleman
Beneficiary