After 97 days in four hospitals, Oklahoma woman makes it home
Becky Bevenue still struggles to comprehend how a bout of dizziness and nausea one night spiraled into five weeks on life support, 97 days in four hospitals and at one point, saying goodbye to her children.
Becky, 48, felt fine earlier that day at her job at an Oklahoma mortgage company. But as she got ready for bed, Becky was wobbly and weak. Her husband drove her to the emergency room at St. Francis Glenpool where she was diagnosed with multilobar pneumonia, a serious lung infection that affects multiple lobes of the lungs. She also had severe sepsis – a life-threatening condition caused by an infection that spreads to the blood stream, releasing toxins that can damage organs – and influenza.
After helping Becky settle into her room, her husband and daughter headed home. Then came the call.
Throughout the night Becky’s oxygen needs had continued to climb.
“They were told I crashed and had to be intubated,” Becky said.
Becky was transferred to St. Francis Hospital in Tulsa, which offered a higher level of care. When she still couldn’t get enough oxygen on a ventilator, she was connected to extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO), a life support machine that takes over the function of a patient’s heart and lungs so those organs can rest. Studies show that approximately 40% of ECMO patients do not survive.
While on ECMO, Becky’s lung collapsed and a chest tube was inserted to reinflate the lung and drain excess fluid. Becky’s kidneys also began failing and she was started on continuous dialysis.
Becky was on ECMO in the intensive care unit for five weeks while battling complications that included her fingers and toes turning black from poor circulation, a side effect of a necessary medication. To improve her breathing, Becky underwent surgery to insert three endobronchial valves in her lungs. Additionally, the breathing tube in her mouth was replaced with a tracheostomy (trach) tube in her windpipe.
At one point, when Becky was coughing up blood and heading into a surgery to insert two additional endobronchial valves, she made a decision.
“If this didn’t work, I was done,” Becky said. “I called in the kids and told them.” Becky couldn’t talk yet; she had to mouth the words.
Looking back now, Becky says, “The Lord had other plans.”
Slow recovery
After that surgery, Becky started to improve. Although she floated in and out of consciousness, she began to awaken from sedation about six weeks after her admission to Saint Francis. Her first lucid memory is looking around the room, realizing she was in a hospital and remembering how, the night before she came to the hospital, she held a baby at a Bible study at her church.
Her family read her lips as she asked about the infant -- Becky was relieved when they told her, “Sam is okay.”
After 47 days at Saint Francis Hospital, Becky was off the ECMO machine. She could breathe without the ventilator and her trach was removed. She was still being fed through a tube in her stomach and undergoing dialysis three times a week to improve her kidney function. She could hardly speak and couldn’t eat. She had healing incisions and her toes and fingers were still black from the lack of blood flow. Muscles throughout her body had atrophied to the point where Becky couldn’t reposition herself in bed.
One of her doctors recommended that she transition to Select Specialty Hospital – Tulsa, a critical illness recovery hospital, where a physician-led, multidisciplinary team put together a plan to help Becky continue her recovery and eventually get back home.
Nurses cared for Becky 24/7, managing her medications, ensuring she was frequently repositioned to avoid pressure ulcers and massaging her fingers and toes with an ointment that helped open her blood vessels and restore blood flow. Becky’s care team also got her out of bed and into a chair twice a day to rebuild her core strength and improve her breathing.
Meanwhile, speech, physical and occupational therapists focused on helping Becky regain her ability to speak, eat, walk and care for herself.
Becky had failed three swallow tests at St. Francis. She craved something to drink but wasn’t allowed any food or liquids by mouth. A speech-language pathologist led her in exercises that strengthened muscles in her tongue and throat while also closely monitoring Becky as she practiced swallowing ice chips and was slowly introduced to food.
She remembers the day she was able to drink thickened cranberry grape juice. “It tasted so good. I was so happy to drink something,” Becky said.
From there, her eating progressed. “I started out with pureed foods, then easy to chew foods then finally regular food,” Becky said.
The therapist also helped Becky speak again. The ventilator and trach were gone but the hole in her windpipe was bandaged and still healing. Becky learned how to put her finger over the hole to direct air through her vocal cords to speak again.
Getting back on her feet
Becky’s exercises in physical and occupational therapy had to accommodate her healing fingers and toes, which were slowly regaining blood flow.
“When I first got there, the bottom half of my body was dead weight. I couldn’t even move myself in bed,” Becky said.
Much of Becky’s early therapy focused on practicing movements in bed, such as rolling left to right, pulling herself up from a lying to sitting position or balancing on the edge of her bed. Becky eventually was able to stand, being careful to only bear weight through the middle of her foot.
Every time Becky had a physical therapy session, she felt better. Stronger.
She remembers early on, when she cried because she couldn’t stand. “I was like, why can’t I do this. I should be able to stand.”
She cried again the day she did stand.
Becky also took a few “shuffle steps” but she could not walk because her toes were still healing.
Becky began regaining upper body strength through chest pulls and arm curls using bands or flexible bars. “They showed me different exercises with the bands to help my arms get stronger. Some I could do on my own and some I did with (the occupational therapist),” Becky recalled.
As her strength and range of motion improved, her husband brought her yarn to try to crochet and practice hand coordination. Therapists also helped her feed herself and comb her hair -- prior to her hospitalization it fell to her hips.
“It was so matted that I had my daughter, a cosmetologist, shave it,” Becky said. “She kept asking me, ‘Are you sure, mom?’ I said, ‘It’s just hair. It will grow back.’”
Making it home
After 24 days at Select Specialty Hospital, Becky could talk, eat and stand for short spurts. Her kidneys had healed so she no longer needed dialysis and blood flow was returning to her fingers and some of her toes.
She was grateful for the care team that “was very on the ball” and cared for her with compassion. “Everyone is very nice. They do their jobs well.”
Becky transitioned to an inpatient rehabilitation hospital for two weeks to continue her recovery. There, she was able to walk 150 feet with a walker and begin to navigate stairs.
When Becky discharged from that hospital, she moved to her son’s home while her husband worked on their home to make it safer for Becky. Her fingers healed, but the damage to her toes from her time on ECMO did require partial amputation.
She’s now back in her own home and continuing to rehabilitate with the help of home health.
“Things are getting easier,” she said. “I can walk a bit without the walker and stand for a longer time,” she said. She can mostly take care of herself and is starting to take care of her family.
She looks forward to taking an outdoor walk and getting back to work.
Through it all, “I’ve had really good care and phenomenal support,” Becky said. “So many people pulled together for me and my family, praying and taking care of my husband and kids. Bringing meals, coming to visit me. The Lord has been good to me.”
