The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Florida man with COVID saved after being flown to Conn. hospital
A Florida father of six who nearly died from complications arising from COVID-19 was saved after a doctor at a Hartford hospital heard about his case on CNN.
Robby Walker tested positive for COVID-19 on July 9, his wife Susan Walker said Wednesday. His symptoms worsened to the point where a week later he was taken to the emergency room for a chest X-ray, where the family learned Walker had pneumonia in both of his lungs.
Robby Walker was admitted to the emergency room July 18 and then was moved to an intensive care unit by the third day he was in the hospital, Susan Walker said.
The disease “blindsided” the family, Susan Walker told CNN, also infecting other members along with Robby.
The 52-year-old was not vaccinated against the disease, Susan Walker said.
“He was experiencing a lot of anxiety,” she said, which doctors could not medicate because of his condition.
On July 25, he called Susan Walker to tell her he’d signed papers to be intubated and placed on a ventilator. Some patients succumb to the disease while on a ventilator, meaning their families never hear from them again.
A little more than a week later, doctors told Susan Walker that her husband “was not going to survive COVID and there was nothing else they could do for him.”
She called a family meeting to talk about any other alternatives. They were told a lung transplant was unlikely due to the existing list of patients waiting for transplants along with the number of COVID patients waiting for lung transplants.
Susan and other family members then began looking for hospitals throughout the South with an available bed for an ECMO machine.
The medical device, an extra corporeal membrane oxygenation machine, acts as an artificial lung, drawing the patient’s blood from a major artery, adding oxygen and removing carbon dioxide before pumping the blood back into the body.
“We went back to our hotel room and cried about it, of course, because we felt like we had lost the battle and that there was nothing else we could do for him,” Susan Walker said. “Next morning we woke up and I turned our hotel room into a makeshift call center.”
The family began calling hospitals all around Florida hoping to find one with an ECMO bed available. If they did, Susan Walker would run the list to her husband’s doctor to have her present his case to them. But every time, Robby Walker didn’t qualify for the treatment. “His age played into it, how long he was intubated played into it,” she said.
They were not alone. Similar reports of families desperately trying to find a hospital with an open machine have cropped up as cases surge in the South. Other hospitals have said they don’t have enough nurses to run the machines.
Exhausting those efforts, Susan Walker was offered the chance to go on CNN on Aug. 8, where she pleaded for any facility inside Florida or outside to take Robby Walker in. “We have searched every hospital from the south of Florida to the north part of Florida,” she said during the interview. “... Now we’re desperately searching outside of the state.”
A turn of fate brought the family’s case to the attention of Dr. Robert Gallagher, head of cardiothoracic surgery at Trinity Health of New England, who spotted Susan’s interview on Facebook.
“She described her frustration at not being able to find a center that could provide ECMO services for her husband who had been stricken with COVID and was on a ventilator,” Gallagher said Wednesday during a media event.
He discussed the case with his perfusionist, who agreed to take on the case and contacted the family through a friend in Florida. They then worked to have Robby Walker transferred to St. Francis Hospital in Hartford, part of the health system’s network. The transfer involved a medical flight to Connecticut, while the family had to drive separately.
By early September, Robby Walker was taken off of ECMO, his wife said. “He progressively improved,” she said. After other treatments, he was released from St. Francis Hospital last Tuesday. He’s now recovering at Gaylord Hospital in Wallingford.
Robby Walker said the staff at both St. Francis and Gaylord have been great. “I can’t thank them enough for saving my life,” he said. “Dr. Gallagher took a chance on me.”
He described his rehabilitation as a “slow process,” after losing more than 50 pounds during his treatment. “I’m basically learning how to... walk and hold my balance. I do have an elevated heart rate.” He said his lungs are also not up to full capacity. “It’s a struggle but we’re making progress at it.”
Dr. Megan Panico, medical director at Gaylord Hospital, said his recovery within the last week was “amazing.”
“He clearly was as sick as the sick get,” she said. Now he’s breathing on his own and working on therapy, and may soon be taken off of oxygen. “He is gonna be one of our COVID patients that walks out the door,” Panico said.
Susan Walker said the couple had been vaccine hesitant prior to Robby’s experience. “We weren’t educated enough to know the science behind the vaccine so of course we were skeptical on our end,” she said.
Since then she said she’s sat in the hospital and listened as family members lose their loved ones to COVID-19. “It’s real, and just get vaccinated... it’s definitely real, I can promise you that it’s definitely real,” she said.
Robby Walker said in hindsight he would have been vaccinated “100 percent.” He said he plans to begin his vaccination at Gaylord, while his wife has already been vaccinated against the disease.
“We know quite a few people that have gotten vaccinated because of this, so if there’s any good that’s come out of this people getting vaccinated,” he said.