NASSAU BAY, Texas -- Megan Dillon, a 27-year-old mother of two, nearly became another swine flu statistic. Instead, she is a survivor, thanks to a team of doctors and nurses at Christus St. John Hospital, an experimental drug and a hospital bed that literally turned her prognosis upside down.
Dillon arrived at the Nassau Bay hospital’s emergency room on October 19. She’d been fighting flu-like symptoms for two weeks but couldn’t get rid of her fever, and now she was struggling to breathe.
"She was critical. I told her there was a chance she wouldn't survive,” said Dr. Luigi Terminella.
Dillon had developed pneumonia and acute respiratory distress syndrome. Her lungs were filled with fluid. Only one of the five lobes in her lungs was working adequately, and her doctors say she had lost nearly 80 percent of her ability to exchange oxygen for carbon dioxide. Her temperature also spiked at 106 degrees.
As part of her emergency treatment, Dillon's doctors ordered a “RotoProne” bed from Kinetic Concepts, Inc. (KCI) in San Antonio. Described by Dr. Terminella as a large “rotisserie,” the device is an elaborate rotating bed. The patient is strapped in and rotated upside down and rocked back and forth so that pressure is relieved from the back of fluid-filled lungs.
At the same time, Dillon was on a ventilator to increase her oxygen intake. Her doctors say she started showing improvement in just 30 minutes. She stayed in the device for several days.
“They were always one step ahead,” Dillon said. “They saved my life. They let me be here today."
"If you see it happen, what happened to her, and you were there watching, you will become a believer,” Dr. Terminella said of the device and the procedure that he says he has used with successful outcomes 76 times.
Dillon was also treated with the experimental anti-viral drug Peramivir. The anti-viral, made by the U.S. drug firm BioCryst, is only available on emergency request from the CDC. It is currently in clinical trials. Dillon’s doctors say it helped bring down her dangerously high temperature.
"It's amazing,” Dillon said as she saw the rotating bed for the first time Tuesday.
She said she doesn’t remember her nine days in the RotoProne, because she was on a ventilator and sedated the whole time. She was finally released from the hospital with a clean bill of health after 26 days.
“She's perfectly, relatively healthful and she almost died. So that's the big message there,” said Terminella. “This thing [swine flu] kills. It kills big-time."
"This bed gave me more of a chance to survive,” said Dillon. "The staff here was just amazing. The doctors were amazing. Just makes me really thankful to be here."
