Michael is prone. The process “could not have gone more smoothly” and Michael “did better than expected.”

Michael is the first patient to be proned while on ECMO in Brigham and Women’s Hospital history. We are very grateful for the wonderful and skilled team of doctors and nurses who performed the procedure. [...]

Thank you very much for all of your prayers for Michael’s healing. Michael especially needs your prayers today.

Unfortunately, Michael has been unable to sustain adequate oxygen saturation levels even with the ECMO machine and ventilator running at full capacity.[...]

Michael remains critically ill. Please pray.

Although the adenovirus is almost out of his system, it has left severe damage to his whole body. Michael’s GI tract is improving, but there has been no improvement to his lungs or kidneys. Please pray God heals him. [...]

Yesterday we received Michael’s Dec.16th blood results showing the adenovirus count is down from 8 million to 457,000! The infectious disease team expects this to continue to decline.[...]

Good News! 

Today Michael achieved a small victory. We received results that the adenovirus is down to 8 million. 8!!! The previous two testings were 95.2 million and 95 million. This is a 92% drop![...]

Hello friends and family,

Today is Wednesday, December 12th. Michael is in critical, life threatening condition. He has been heavily sedated for the last 14 days while supported by a ventilator and an oxygenation machine called ECMO, as he fights like hell to rid his body of infection and virus. Michael is in the thoracic ICU at Brigham & Women's Hospital in Boston, getting the absolute best care in the world.[...]

November 13th Michael was diagnosed with mono while at college (University of Wisconsin Madison).
 
Friday November 16th Michael came home to Kennebunk, ME for Thanksgiving break, a few days early so he could rest and get his papers done. 
 
Coincidentally, Michael had a routine physical scheduled on Tuesday November 20th. Michael still has the mono, but was on the mend, and there were zero other concerns from that physical.
 
Thanksgiving Day, Michael went to Newport RI and enjoyed a delicious turkey dinner with lots of family. Friday evening, on the way home from RI, Michael felt very sick and was suddenly having trouble breathing. He went to the ER and was told these were just symptoms of mono.
 
Michael continued to feel very sick over the weekend and returned to the ER on Sunday night, and was diagnosed with pneumonia. Michael went to his primary care physician on Monday morning (11/26). He was admitted to the Elliot Hospital in Manchester, NH to treat the pneumonia. 
 
Late Tuesday night, Michael was coughing and hacking for a couple of hours, running a high fever, and having trouble breathing. They decided to move him immediately to the ICU.
 
All day Wednesday, Michael sat in the ICU and concentrated on taking deep slow breaths, in through the nose out through the mouth. The nurse told us what he was doing was the equivalent of running a marathon. The one vital we were watching, his oxygenation, needed to stay above 92. Michael could not see the screen from his bed, so he obsessively asked us what it was, even by just the point of a finger as he could hardly speak. He was so determined to keep it up in high 90s by sticking with the right breathing pattern.
 
He fought hard all day long, until about 7pm when the attending physician decided his lungs needed a rest, and Michael needed the support of a ventilator. 
 
Michael was put into a medically induced coma, and the intubation procedure was completed successfully. However, around 6am the next morning (Thursday 11/29), they decided to helicopter Michael to Brigham & Women’s hospital in Boston. They made this decision in large part due to the fact that Brigham & Women's hospital has ECMO, and Elliot did not. ECMO is another way of supporting the lungs. It is a machine that takes blood from the patient, oxygenates the blood, and pumps it back into the patient. In the event that Michael may need ECMO, the doctors at Elliot decided to be proactive and get Michael down to Brigham & Women's.[...]