gofundme Colby Vondenstein and family
At age 24 and without prior conditions, Colby Vondenstein should have been at low risk for a severe case of COVID-19. But after the virus, like so many Americans this year, contracted during a family celebration, the three-month-old father spent life in the hospital and had to have a double lung transplant and a kidney transplant to survive.
Vondenstein, his wife, Tori, and their three children celebrated Christmas with his extended family. A few days later, Colby ‘started to feel bad’, he told Fox9, and he took medicine and thought it was just ‘common cold’. But soon, other family members experienced similar symptoms, and all the adults during the celebration of the holiday were positive about COVID-19, including Tori (28) and one of their three children.
Initially, Colby was able to manage his symptoms at their home in Crosby, Texas, and they expected that they would just ‘leave’ [the virus] take its course, ”Tori said Today. But while she was recovering quickly, Colby was still deteriorating to the point that he could not get up to go to the bathroom, and on January 5, they had to call an ambulance to take him to the local hospital, where he has ‘fought’. for his life, ‘she said.
gofundme Colby Vondenstein and family at Christmas
“They gave him steroids to help the lungs, but they could not do much because the kidneys weakened,” she said. “They said that … that he would not make it.”
Colby got pneumonia, his lungs collapsed and his kidneys failed. He started getting dialysis for his kidneys and was put in a ventilator. But with such a serious case, Colby needed more help and was transferred to Houston Methodist Hospital on Jan. 11.
“I was not really scared when I woke up, and they had all these tubes in me, and I did not know what was going on,” he said. Today.
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Tori told Fox9 that he was “pretty unbearable” to see how he was connected to all the machines.
“It was hard to watch my best friend, the love of my life, fight for his life.”
Dr Howard Huang, Colby’s pulmonologist at Houston Methodist, said his severe COVID-19 disease was a “puzzle” as he had no preconditions, and that they should give him a “particularly aggressive” treatment. .
“He came in and was already in kidney failure, already had severe respiratory distress, and progressed rapidly to mechanical ventilation,” Huang said. Today.
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They put him on an ECMO, a life-support machine, to keep his lungs and heart going.
“He became completely dependent on ECMO and initially needed very heavy sedation,” Huang added. “The problem has become that you have a person who is now sitting on the ECMO machine, and is not a real viable solution.”
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After two months at the ECMO, Huang started looking to get Colby on the transplant list for a new set of lungs and a new kidney, because “he really did not have that much more time for these devices.” And with his younger age ‘he had a fair chance of getting through this.’
But it took time to find a donor, and the doctors and nurses “still did everything in their power to keep him alive,” Tori said. “On February 27, I came in the morning, and the doctor stopped me in the ward and said that it was getting harder and harder and that our time, like days, was touching.”
“To see how he goes through it and to see how he literally fights to live, I can not even describe it,” she said. ‘It’s the worst pain I’ve ever felt. I can only describe it as someone being tortured. ‘
That night they found a donor and Colby had a double lung transplant and a kidney transplant the next day.
Colby is now recovering in hospital, and four weeks after the operation he was able to take his first steps again, a “very pleasant” moment for Huang, who said that Colby is the typical recovery time far ahead.
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The family, who are raising money for their medical bills on GoFundMe, expect to spend another two weeks in the hospital before finally being able to go to his children for the first time in months. They also want younger, healthier people to understand that COVID-19 can also be seriously affected.
“Even if you get sick, you need to be careful with your signs and symptoms, know when to get help or seek medical attention,” Tori said. “You only realize before someone happens to you that you like how deadly the virus can be.”
And Colby thanks his donor and their family for their “selflessness,” adding that he does not wish it on anyone.