Join Collin's Journey Back to Health

Hi, I am Jeremy, a close friend of Kory and Erica Kats whose son Collin was in a bad traffic accident recently. Please consider helping this amazing 14 year old and his family fight for Collins life back!

At around 1:00 AM on Sunday, April 7. Collin was involved in an accident on highway 71 while driving a Polaris Ranger. While attempting to take a left turn from the outside lane, he was struck by a car. Colling was stuck in the UTV and pulled out by the driver of the other vehicle. The other passenger of the UTV only sustained mild injuries and was released from the Spirit Lake hospital on the same day.

Collin received several severe fractures to his skull on the front and back and remains in the ICU at the Sanford Childrens “Castle”. He is being kept in deep sedation (what we would call a medically induced coma) due to swelling in his brain causing very high Inter Cranial Pressure. The Doctors and nurses have worked very hard to keep pressures within a safe range medically. So, no surgery has been needed yet!

He has given us few big scares with pressures at times almost tripling what the doctors want to see! He seems to be more stable now. But, a long blood clot has been found in a vein on the right side of his brain and the doctors are using Heparin to thin the blood and let the body remove the clot on its own. This could be the cause for the prolonged higher pressures.

Right now, doctors have removed the paralytic keeping him in a coma to let his muscles start to move again. The sedation is being kept high so he does not wake up just yet.

Hopefully, at the end of the week we are able to wake him up and remove the pressure BOLT from his head! When he gets well enough here, they will move him to pediatrics for continued observation and then Physical Therapy to get him moving and doing everything he loves to do again!

Collins biggest passion is of course his family. He has 2 younger sister and 1 younger brother that he loves very much. They have been here to visit him often!

He also loves the Minnesota Vikings and explains football to me as we are watching games on Sunday!

Collin Loves being outside. Especially being around Okoboji in the summer. He can be found fishing almost every day no matter what the weather is. In the winter he is also getting more into hunting and shot his first deer in the last season. He loves playing all sports for Okoboji Pioneers, but his favorite is by far football.

He spent his 14th birthday asleep in the hospital on April 10th. He was really looking forward to getting his permit to drive!

In the future, assuming professional fishing doesn’t take off, Collin has been talking a lot about wanting to become a pilot. We have been talking about getting him started in some early training courses for flying.

Please consider helping this amazing 14 year old and his family fight for Collins life back!