The nursing mother of a 13-year-old boy who died of COVID-19 after a cough attack has described how her blood was splattered on the wall of a hospital while urging Americans to take her seriously. pandemic.
Peyton Baumgarth, who had asthma and a thyroid problem, died of complications from COVID-19 on Oct. 31 just six days after showing symptoms.
Peyton’s devastated mother, Stephanie Franek, a 44-year-old nurse and mother of two, had taken him to a Missouri hospital just two days before his condition suddenly deteriorated as the nail beds turned blue and struggled to speak easily.
He then suffered a severe cough attack in the ICU of St. Louis Cardinal Glennon Children’s Hospital in St. Louis and died because doctors were unable to raise blood oxygen levels.
Peyton Baumgarth, who had asthma and a thyroid problem, died Oct. 31 when he suffered a severe cough attack in the ICU of Cardinal Glennon Children’s Hospital in SSM, St. Louis.
Peyton’s devastated mother, Stephanie Franek, 44, had taken him to the hospital just two days before his condition suddenly deteriorated as the nail beds turned blue and he struggled to speak easily.
Franek has commented on his son’s last moments to remember that children can also die from the virus.
The tragic death of the 13-year-old occurred just six weeks before his aunt, who was also a nurse, died from the deadly virus.
Peyton’s heartbroken mother told The Sun that she tested positive for the virus on Oct. 25 and that both she and her son began to show mild symptoms.
Franek said Peyton’s symptoms didn’t seem dangerous and they only spent time in quarantine watching Netflix together.
But on Oct. 29 he said he realized his son was making a turn for the worse.
Peyton’s toenails and toenails turned blue and he struggled to hold a conversation, she said.
The worried mother took her son to the hospital that day, where doctors found that his oxygen saturation levels had dropped to 44%, less than half the level of a healthy person.
Franek said she was surprised by this because, as a nurse, “I’ve never seen anyone walk and talk with an oxygen saturation level of just 44%.”
Within an hour, Peyton was fitted with a ventilator and had his extracorporeal membrane oxygenated, a treatment that replaces the function of a person’s lungs by pumping blood to an artificial lung that adds oxygen and removes carbon dioxide. .
Franek told the dam that he still thought “we’ll get over this hump and take it home.”
But two days later, on October 31, Peyton deteriorated rapidly and began to have a coughing fit and bleeding in his chest.
The tragic death of the 13-year-old (with her mother) occurred just six weeks before her aunt also died from the deadly virus.
“I had this big cough attack and it basically started bleeding in my chest,” he said.
Doctors performed CPR and tried to replace the ECMO tubes in his neck to increase oxygen levels, which caused the blood in his chest to spread to all surgeons and the walls of the hospital, he said. say his mother.
“He went through all the cardiothoracic surgeon and he kept working,” he said.
A team of ten nurses and four doctors desperately tried to save him, but were unable to and Franek watched as his son died.
Franek received it again six weeks later, when his sister died on December 7 due to COVID-19.
Cyndi Crawford, a 57-year-old nurse, had a virus the week before Thanksgiving and was also given a ventilator and given an ECMO before she died.
“A loss would have been heartbreaking on its own, but these two have completely broken our hearts,” Franek said.
Franek said he was surprised his son died of COVID-19, as it is usually not as deadly to children.
“I never thought this would happen,” he said.
“You don’t hear about kids taking Covid and it’s so serious. I was shocked.
“I can’t describe this devastating and sudden loss.”
Franek said he wants to share his son’s story to warn people to take the virus seriously and not see COVID-19 as something “political”.
“I hope people take Covid more seriously and don’t say it’s a political agenda or some kind of fake news or that it’s the same as the flu,” he said.
He said his family had been “very careful” during the pandemic, but that he was still ill.
‘We were very careful. If we ever went anywhere, we always wore masks and we always washed our hands and used hand sanitizer and we still had Covid, ”he warned.
Peyton’s heartbroken mother told The Sun that she tested positive for the virus on Oct. 25 and that both she and her son began to show mild symptoms. On October 29, he was taken to hospital when his nail beds turned blue
Doctors found that their oxygen saturation levels had dropped to 44%, less than half the level of a healthy person.
Franek told the dam that he still thought “we’ll get over this hump and take it home.” But two days later, on October 31, Peyton died
He said that while “every day is a struggle to get out of bed”, he has found some comfort in reuniting with his ex Chris Lottmann, who “was very close to Peyton”.
Franek paid tribute to his son who described him as “the sweetest boy” who “made everyone smile.”
A recent study by the American Academy of Pediatrics found that one million children had been diagnosed with COVID-19 as of Nov. 12, accounting for 11.5 percent of all cases in the United States at that time. moment.
By this time, 133 children had died, meaning the mortality rate was 0.01%, while between 0.5% and 6.1% of all cases of childhood COVID-19 they resulted in hospitalization.
Children tend to have a lower risk of serious illness or death from coronavirus, according to the CDC as the risk of serious illness increases with age.
Across the country, nearly 17.5 million people of all ages have been infected and 313,000 have died.
Hospitalizations reached record levels Friday with 114,751 patients across America, according to the COVID follow-up project.
Cases also increased by 228,825 in a single day, while 2,751 more people died.
