Pray for Eli

*Hey everyone, my name is Emily Starling. Courtney Heath, Katlyn Jordan, and I are trying to help our friends with the future medical bills, gas, food, etc while Eli is getting his treatment and recovery! We are asking that if you can’t donate, please join us in praying for Eli and his family! We have been friends with Paula and Jonathan for well over 20 years. They have 2 beautiful children, Eli (6) and Camden (1).*

Around February 14th Eli started feeling bad with an extremely painful headache. They treated him for what they thought could be a virus but eventually ended up taking him to the medical clinic after days of extreme pain and refusing to eat (2/21/22). After some testing and no improvement, they felt it best to move him to Wake ER.

(2/22/24) There they proceeded with a spinal tap and MRI of his spine and brain. This showed that Eli had inflammation on his spinal cord and in his brain. He was diagnosed with Acute disseminated encephalomyelitis (ADEM). Essentially your body gets confused due to a virus and starts attacking itself. During this time Eli lost the use of his legs and became very irritated. He was still in extreme pain. They assumed the irritation could be from the 4 hour sedation, nerve pain, or just over it all. They finally gave him morphine and settled him down. He had to keep a catheter in until he improved due to the bladder retention and once they could get some of the inflammation down they would start looking more in depth at the recovery of his legs and extent of physical therapy needed.

(2/23/24) It was decided by the team at Wake to transfer Eli to UNC after he was showing no improvement. He had become even more irritated due to lesions on his brain making him unable to communicate. Once at UNC they talked with the medical team about the next step in Eli’s treatment. This involves filtering out the bad blood in his body and replacing it with good blood over a course of about 10 days every other day. They placed a NG tube to dispense pain medication since he couldn’t take any by mouth.

(2/24/24) AM: The care team decided to place Eli on a ventilator that morning and then did the line placement for the plex treatment. The ventilator is because of how much sedation is required for the surgery and the amount of sedation meds that's been needed to keep him comfortable. Kids are ventilated sometimes so there's not an emergency situation during the sedation.

PM: from Paula:

“They did the first treatment today. They put him on the ventilator because it was very important that he be so sedated he not move for the line placement. They were going to remove the ventilator right after but after seeing how he's resting so well with little of meds they recommended giving his body a rest and leave him on until Monday and allow time for the body to heal and the treatment to work so maybe he's not so agitated. The meds they can use with the breathing tube work better and he requires less to be comfortable. He's initiating the breathing on his own so he's not dependent on the machine it's just there for better oxygen with that med prior to the vent it was alot of up and down with being comfortable and so he required all kinds of different meds and his little body is just tired. No risk of leaving him on it bc he's not relying on it per the team if that makes sense.”

*as of right now that is all the updates I have. I plan to continue updating as Eli’s treatments and recovery continues!*

venmo: pwtyner