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"I waited a long time". A woman who gave birth in a coma from COVID-19 meets her baby for the first time

2021-02-03T17:46:35.937Z


Kelsey Townsend was nine months pregnant when she contracted the coronavirus, and her condition rapidly deteriorated to the brink of death. Thus he recovered to return to his family.


By Chloe Atkins - NBC News

Almost three months after giving birth in a coma from COVID-19, a Wisconsin woman was able to meet her newborn baby for the first time.

Kelsey Townsend, 32, was released from the hospital on January 27, after which she was reunited with her husband and their four children, including baby Lucy.

Townsend said being able to hug her back home was indescribably "amazing."

"I waited a long time to meet her and I am overjoyed," she told NBC News.

Townsend

 was nine months pregnant when she contracted the coronavirus

last October.

A short time later, the woman, who did not have any pre-existing illness that made her more vulnerable, had to be hospitalized because she was short of breath;

She had a severe cough and pneumonia, according to her husband, Derek Townsend.

Kelsey Townsend, with her daughter Lucy and still using a supplemental oxygen cannula, after being discharged from the hospital where she was admitted with a severe case of COVID-19 Taryn Marie Photography / NBC

Her condition worsened such that she had to be put into an induced coma and that's how she gave birth to

Lucy, who tested negative for COVID-19

and was able to go home with the rest of her family.

[AstraZeneca's vaccine reduces the spread of coronavirus and is effective with a single dose]

Townsend, meanwhile, was transferred to UW Health Specialty Hospital in Madison, where she spent several months on a ventilator and an ECMO (extracorporeal oxygenation, sometimes called artificial lung) machine.

"There was no certainty that she was going to go home. There were several times when I got calls from the doctors

telling me they didn't think she was going to survive that night

... it was an emotional seesaw," Derek Townsend said.

By December doctors indicated that Townsend needed a lung transplant in order to survive and placed her on a waiting list.

Derek said he told his wife, still in a coma, on Christmas Eve. 

The Townsend Family: Kelsey and Derek with their four children.Taryn Marie Photography / NBC

However, days after Townsend was added to the transplant waiting list, her condition began to improve.

By mid-January it was possible to remove her from the intensive care unit to extubate her from the ventilator and the ECMO machine. 

[New variants of coronavirus could re-infect people who have already fallen ill with COVID-19]

It has improved so much that it is no longer a priority for transplants.

Daniel P. McCarthy, a cardiothoracic surgeon at UW Health, director of the ECMO program and who monitored Townsend, said they still don't know how it was possible for the woman's lungs to recover like this after being affected by the virus for months.

They applaud a little girl who spent nine months in a New Mexico hospital for COVID-19

Feb. 3, 202100: 35

"

We don't fully understand why some people recover

and others don't, or what makes the lungs start to recover and heal in a way that is possible to make so much progress," McCarthy said.

By January 27, Townsend was released from the hospital.

He is currently at home on supplemental oxygen equipment, and is receiving remedial physical therapy.

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"Her strength throughout the process is what inspired the family to be strong in what we hoped for. Many times it was near the end, but it prevailed," said Derek, her husband.

Derek and Kelsey Townsend on the day the woman was discharged from the hospital, January 27, 2021. Taryn Marie Photography / NBC

Townsend faces several months of therapy so she can formally recover and be strong enough, but McCarthy said optimistically that she will make it through.

"Kelsey has made tremendous strides," said the doctor, "she really

is an inspiration for how she got through all the challenges

."

Source: telemundo

All news articles on 2021-02-03

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