Support Lori Whitty's Fight for Health and Home

Hello and thank you for visiting and considering making a donation. Lori Whitty is a beloved mother of 3 children, Nana of 7 grandchildren, and a wonderful and caring aunt, sister, and friend. Lori is fighting for her life, in Germany, and is without any medical insurance coverage and is unable to be transported from the ICU back home.

Your donation will be used to help cover her tremendous medical expenses and help save her from losing her home to cover the costs. More about her story is below.

Lori traveled to Germany to spend the holidays with her oldest son, Sean, his wife, and 3 of her grandchildren. She left on December 4th, 2024 and would be joined by her daughter, Ellen, and her family on December 19th.

Shortly after arriving in Germany, she became ill with what started as cold-like symptoms that progressed to a cough and flu-like symptoms. She was seen by a doctor and prescribed antibiotics which helped initially, but she unfortunately got worse shortly after finishing them.

By December 24th, on Christmas Eve, it was clear that something was terribly wrong. She was taken to the emergency room where she was diagnosed with pneumonia in both lungs. She was admitted to the hospital and started on intravenous antibiotics. The antibiotics did not help and she continued to get worse as the doctors worked to figure out why. Her condition quickly became critical and on December 27th, the decision was made to intubate her and place her into a medically-induced coma and on a ventilator.

After over a week on the ventilator and no improvement to her condition, she was transferred by ambulance over two hours away to a university hospital in Hanover, Germany for more advanced care. There she was officially diagnosed with Human Metapneumovirus which led to acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) and the failure of her lungs.

Over the next week and a half, her lung condition improved as her infection began to finally start to clear. On January 10th, her doctors decided it was time to try to bring her out of her coma and start the process of weaning her off the ventilator. Due to her age, the severity of her illness, the type of sedation she required, and the extended period of time that she was under sedation, it is taking her longer than expected to wake up. A tracheostomy was performed on January 13th so that her breathing tube could be removed and she could be more comfortable on the ventilator.

The doctors are hopeful that she will continue to wake up, and can be moved to a rehabilitation center, where she will need to learn how to swallow, talk, walk and more. The extent of what she must relearn is unknown. Due to this, and an extreme loss of muscle mass and weight, we are unable to escort her home for continued care in the United States for another month or more without a medivac transport.

We thank you from the bottom of our hearts for any contribution you are able to make to her recovery.

We will continue to post updates here as soon as we get them.

Thank you.