Published: Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Flu’s full force shocks an Edmonds man and family
A presumed case of swine flu left a man, 26, fighting for his life.
EDMONDS — The swine flu started the way of so many winter viruses.
Collin Ferrel, 26, of Edmonds spent a weekend in Leavenworth celebrating Oktoberfest. The next day, Oct. 5, he had a cough, a fever of about 102 F, and was so exhausted he stayed home from work.
He spent the next four days trying to rest and shake off what he thought was just a winter bug. His mother, Judy Ferrel, finally persuaded him to go to a clinic.
By the time of his appointment, his breathing had become more labored.
“He was kind of panting; breathing fast,” she said.
Clinic doctors told him to go straight to a hospital.
“At that point, I wasn’t nauseous. I just did not feel good. I had a bad, hacking cough — my back started to get sore from coughing,” he said.
His mother drove him to Providence Regional Medical Center Everett.
Tests found that the amount of oxygen in his blood was lower than normal and he had pneumonia.
Doctors assumed he had H1N1 influenza. He fit the pattern of the pandemic that first began this spring: a young man with fever, cough and pneumonia. Medical tests never confirmed what virus he had.
They checked him in right away. Over the next few days, the pneumonia spread quickly and was so severe one physician said Ferrel’s chest X-ray looked like a white out.
Four days after he was admitted, Ferrel was rushed into the critical care unit.
He was hooked up to a ventilator to keep him breathing.
And his family held vigil for 11 days, not knowing if a man in the prime of his youth was going to live or die.
The flu doesn’t play fair.
Swine flu has killed two people in Snohomish County so far this year. The death of a 5-month-old child from Tulalip earlier this month is being investigated as a possible third fatality. Almost 4,000 people have died nationwide from H1N1, which often hits younger, healthier people the hardest. Those 65 and older have been relatively unaffected.
Last month in Everett, a flu virus brought on Ferrel’s pneumonia, which so disabled his lungs that there was “very little left of his airways that could transport oxygen effectively to his bloodstream,” said Dr. Julie Wood, a critical care pulmonologist at Providence.
He was put on 100 percent oxygen, and machines pushed it through his body at maximum capacity.
When a tube was inserted into his throat to help him breath, “his oxygen absolutely went down to nothing,” said Sheila Bleakney, a critical care nurse.
Typically, patients with such severe pneumonia are in their late 50s and 60s and 70s.
This fall, the hospital’s critical care staff has seen about six similar cases, all among far younger people, ranging between the ages of 26 and 52, she said.
“I am amazed at the number of sick young people we’re getting. They’re profoundly ill. You always have that sense that if I do the right things, I’m not going to get it.”
Ferrel was heavily sedated and medically paralyzed, so, like a car on slow idle, the energy his body did have was conserved for the most vital, life-sustaining functions.
He was quarantined to protect his weakened immune system.
Everyone coming to his room — including his family — had to wear a mask, gloves and medical gowns.
“You didn’t see a lot of improvement day to day,” Judy Ferrel said. “That was the hard part.”
Ferrel was so medically fragile that at one point Wood told the family he might not survive.
“Of course as you can imagine, the parents were just beside themselves,” Wood said. “You know they’re going over in their mind: What if he doesn’t make it? What do we do then?”
Judy Ferrel, who oversees Providence’s lab, knew enough about the inner workings of the hospital to know just how serious her son’s condition was.
“We were pretty much camped there,” she said. “We got to know all the nurses.”
Even after she left for the day, they knew she would call one more time to check up on him before she went to bed.
“It was the only way I could sleep,” she added. “It takes you back to when they were little. It was that one more check that he was OK.”
Her son had one big factor in his favor — his youth.
“In fact, with other H1N1 cases in the critical care unit I’ve taken care of, the patients survived because they’re otherwise healthy and young,” Wood said.
Improvement in patients this sick happens slowly at first, and then tends to speed up, she said. The body rallies. The ability to transport oxygen improves.
About seven days after being put on the ventilator, Ferrel’s lungs started to clear and he was able to absorb more oxygen on his own.
The machines were dialed down. He was allowed to become more aware.
On Oct. 25, the ventilator tube was removed.
So what was one of the first things her son said?
“I’ve got to go get fitted for a tux.”
He still hoped to be a groomsman in a friend’s wedding the next weekend.
On Oct. 27, Ferrel was returned to a regular hospital room.
Doctors and nurses kept reminding him that he’d missed 11 days of his life.
All he remembers are two scenes: going into critical care and coming out of it.
During his illness he lost 45 pounds.
Physical therapists began working with him to strengthen his severely weakened arms and legs. “It’s amazing how hard it was to stand up the first couple of times,” he said.
Ferrel describes himself as “a big dude.”
Being overweight is one of several factors, such as being pregnant, having asthma or diabetes that put people at higher risk of severe complications from swine flu.
Even so, no one knows why some young patients, like the 32-year-old mountain climber hospitalized just before Ferrel, end up in a life-and-death struggle with the virus, while others, though miserable for a few days, don’t.
Ferrel said he’s always been healthy, and like many people in their 20s, never worried much about getting a flu shot.
“It can hit totally normal individuals who are young and healthy,” said Dr. Yuan-Po Tu, medical director of walk-in clinics at The Everett Clinic. “That can be rather devastating and hard to explain to people: Why me? Or why my child?”
It’s also common for patients such as Ferrel to have all the symptoms of swine flu, yet have their tests come back negative, according to the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.
Ferrel said he hopes his story will help persuade people in their 20s to be vaccinated against swine flu.
He was discharged on Halloween, the same day that more than 22,000 children and adults in Snohomish County were given the swine flu vaccine.
“I came out of this with no major side effects,” he said.
One week later, he was a groomsman at his best friend’s wedding. He was still too weak to stand at the altar, so he sat in a nearby pew.
Life is slowly beginning to regain its normal rhythms. After more than a month of being out of work, Ferrel on Thursday returned part-time to his sales job at a fisheries supply company in Seattle.
He still doesn’t have the stamina he once had but “it’s getting there; it’s just going to take more work,” he said.
His mom said she will never think of the flu the same again. His struggle will always be remembered as an emotional benchmark in family history.
“This will be a year like 1918,” she said, referring to the year the Spanish flu epidemic began. “It will be marked in our minds forever.”
Sharon Salyer:425-339-3486 or salyer@heraldnet.com.
Collin Ferrel, 26, of Edmonds spent a weekend in Leavenworth celebrating Oktoberfest. The next day, Oct. 5, he had a cough, a fever of about 102 F, and was so exhausted he stayed home from work.
He spent the next four days trying to rest and shake off what he thought was just a winter bug. His mother, Judy Ferrel, finally persuaded him to go to a clinic.
By the time of his appointment, his breathing had become more labored.
“He was kind of panting; breathing fast,” she said.
Clinic doctors told him to go straight to a hospital.
“At that point, I wasn’t nauseous. I just did not feel good. I had a bad, hacking cough — my back started to get sore from coughing,” he said.
His mother drove him to Providence Regional Medical Center Everett.
Tests found that the amount of oxygen in his blood was lower than normal and he had pneumonia.
Doctors assumed he had H1N1 influenza. He fit the pattern of the pandemic that first began this spring: a young man with fever, cough and pneumonia. Medical tests never confirmed what virus he had.
They checked him in right away. Over the next few days, the pneumonia spread quickly and was so severe one physician said Ferrel’s chest X-ray looked like a white out.
Four days after he was admitted, Ferrel was rushed into the critical care unit.
He was hooked up to a ventilator to keep him breathing.
And his family held vigil for 11 days, not knowing if a man in the prime of his youth was going to live or die.
The flu doesn’t play fair.
Swine flu has killed two people in Snohomish County so far this year. The death of a 5-month-old child from Tulalip earlier this month is being investigated as a possible third fatality. Almost 4,000 people have died nationwide from H1N1, which often hits younger, healthier people the hardest. Those 65 and older have been relatively unaffected.
Last month in Everett, a flu virus brought on Ferrel’s pneumonia, which so disabled his lungs that there was “very little left of his airways that could transport oxygen effectively to his bloodstream,” said Dr. Julie Wood, a critical care pulmonologist at Providence.
He was put on 100 percent oxygen, and machines pushed it through his body at maximum capacity.
When a tube was inserted into his throat to help him breath, “his oxygen absolutely went down to nothing,” said Sheila Bleakney, a critical care nurse.
Typically, patients with such severe pneumonia are in their late 50s and 60s and 70s.
This fall, the hospital’s critical care staff has seen about six similar cases, all among far younger people, ranging between the ages of 26 and 52, she said.
“I am amazed at the number of sick young people we’re getting. They’re profoundly ill. You always have that sense that if I do the right things, I’m not going to get it.”
Ferrel was heavily sedated and medically paralyzed, so, like a car on slow idle, the energy his body did have was conserved for the most vital, life-sustaining functions.
He was quarantined to protect his weakened immune system.
Everyone coming to his room — including his family — had to wear a mask, gloves and medical gowns.
“You didn’t see a lot of improvement day to day,” Judy Ferrel said. “That was the hard part.”
Ferrel was so medically fragile that at one point Wood told the family he might not survive.
“Of course as you can imagine, the parents were just beside themselves,” Wood said. “You know they’re going over in their mind: What if he doesn’t make it? What do we do then?”
Judy Ferrel, who oversees Providence’s lab, knew enough about the inner workings of the hospital to know just how serious her son’s condition was.
“We were pretty much camped there,” she said. “We got to know all the nurses.”
Even after she left for the day, they knew she would call one more time to check up on him before she went to bed.
“It was the only way I could sleep,” she added. “It takes you back to when they were little. It was that one more check that he was OK.”
Her son had one big factor in his favor — his youth.
“In fact, with other H1N1 cases in the critical care unit I’ve taken care of, the patients survived because they’re otherwise healthy and young,” Wood said.
Improvement in patients this sick happens slowly at first, and then tends to speed up, she said. The body rallies. The ability to transport oxygen improves.
About seven days after being put on the ventilator, Ferrel’s lungs started to clear and he was able to absorb more oxygen on his own.
The machines were dialed down. He was allowed to become more aware.
On Oct. 25, the ventilator tube was removed.
So what was one of the first things her son said?
“I’ve got to go get fitted for a tux.”
He still hoped to be a groomsman in a friend’s wedding the next weekend.
On Oct. 27, Ferrel was returned to a regular hospital room.
Doctors and nurses kept reminding him that he’d missed 11 days of his life.
All he remembers are two scenes: going into critical care and coming out of it.
During his illness he lost 45 pounds.
Physical therapists began working with him to strengthen his severely weakened arms and legs. “It’s amazing how hard it was to stand up the first couple of times,” he said.
Ferrel describes himself as “a big dude.”
Being overweight is one of several factors, such as being pregnant, having asthma or diabetes that put people at higher risk of severe complications from swine flu.
Even so, no one knows why some young patients, like the 32-year-old mountain climber hospitalized just before Ferrel, end up in a life-and-death struggle with the virus, while others, though miserable for a few days, don’t.
Ferrel said he’s always been healthy, and like many people in their 20s, never worried much about getting a flu shot.
“It can hit totally normal individuals who are young and healthy,” said Dr. Yuan-Po Tu, medical director of walk-in clinics at The Everett Clinic. “That can be rather devastating and hard to explain to people: Why me? Or why my child?”
It’s also common for patients such as Ferrel to have all the symptoms of swine flu, yet have their tests come back negative, according to the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.
Ferrel said he hopes his story will help persuade people in their 20s to be vaccinated against swine flu.
He was discharged on Halloween, the same day that more than 22,000 children and adults in Snohomish County were given the swine flu vaccine.
“I came out of this with no major side effects,” he said.
One week later, he was a groomsman at his best friend’s wedding. He was still too weak to stand at the altar, so he sat in a nearby pew.
Life is slowly beginning to regain its normal rhythms. After more than a month of being out of work, Ferrel on Thursday returned part-time to his sales job at a fisheries supply company in Seattle.
He still doesn’t have the stamina he once had but “it’s getting there; it’s just going to take more work,” he said.
His mom said she will never think of the flu the same again. His struggle will always be remembered as an emotional benchmark in family history.
“This will be a year like 1918,” she said, referring to the year the Spanish flu epidemic began. “It will be marked in our minds forever.”
Sharon Salyer:425-339-3486 or salyer@heraldnet.com.
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