Mast family’s battle with COVID has happy ending

By Reed Anfinson
Co-Publisher
It was Monday, Oct. 18, when COVID-19 came to the Joe and Michelle Mast household in Hancock. Neither Joe nor his wife Michelle were vaccinated though they had discussed getting her the shot just that day.
“We decided Michelle would get vaccinated because we were learning that pregnant women in their late second and third trimesters see the worst possible outcomes if they get it. So she was going to get vaccinated. But we got it.”
Over the next 46 days, Michelle would come close to dying, see her baby delivered by an emergency C-Section in her ICU room, and be faced with needing a double-lung transplant. Through much of her hospitalization, she was on a ventilator and sedated, unaware of intensive efforts to save her and her child’s life.
Joe began feeling his COVID-19 symptoms early the morning of Oct. 18, and several hours later, Michelle would also start feeling sick. But that morning, Michelle was scheduled for her seven-month ultrasound to check on the progress of Michelle’s pregnancy. His wife had been on bed rest for several weeks at this time. 
After the ultrasound, they bought groceries and stopped by his mother’s (Becky Mast) house in Benson. Knowing he was going downhill, he suggested they go home to Hancock, where he could put the groceries away for his wife before he got sicker.
“That night, it was over,” Joe said. “I laid down on the floor, and I couldn’t move. It literally physically hurt to touch my skin. It felt like a touch to my skin went right to the bone it hurt so bad.” That following day, Michelle felt worse with a headache and low-grade fever.
Joe’s condition worsened through Oct. 19. Except to use the bathroom, he said he didn’t get off the floor until Wednesday morning, Oct. 20. “I just couldn’t move. It was so painful,” he said. He was running a fever of about 100 degrees.
While Michelle lay on the couch nearby, Joe said he noticed his wife was starting to cough. “I am very familiar with respiratory conditions because I have had a lot of my own,” he said. He has been using a nebulizer at home for 15 years to make breathing easier when needed.
“The way she was coughing and the way she sounded, I worried it was going to turn into pneumonia,” he said. “By Wednesday evening, I could tell it was already turning into that and there was nothing I could do.” He did give her his nebulizer, which seemed to help, he said.
Thursday morning, Oct. 21, Joe was feeling better; Michelle wasn’t. He decided to take her to the Stevens Community Medical Center (SCMC) in Morris eight miles away. His lungs were fine, the doctor said. Michelle’s lungs sounded good as well, they said. Joe thought differently. They were told they could go home and return if Michelle’s symptoms worsened. They were also tested for COVID-19.
By 8 o’clock that evening, both Joe and his wife “got so sick that it was just insane. It was the worst headache I could have imagined. It felt like a metal rod going through the eyebrow and the back of the head. It was the same for both of us.”
They were taking Tylenol to manage their pain on Friday morning, but it wasn’t working. Joe’s temperature reached over 104 degrees. His wife’s fever rose to 102 degrees, he said. Joe said the two started taking turns taking cool showers to manage their fevers.
Saturday morning, Oct. 23, they were notified on the MyChart hospital account that they tested positive for COVID-19. As he was preparing to call the doctor, a physician at SCMC called him. “My wife isn’t doing good. She needs medical attention,” he told the doctor.
Joe said that based on his past experiences, he thought pneumonia was caused only by bacteria. He said he didn’t know that COVID-19 pneumonia was caused by a virus. The doctor prescribed an antibiotic for Michelle to see if it combined with the nebulizer treatment would help. Joe said they were told to come to the emergency room if her condition worsened.
The treatments didn’t improve his wife’s health. “Saturday night was a really bad night. I thought I was going to lose her at home,” he said.
Sunday morning, Oct. 24, he called the SCMC emergency room and was told to bring his wife in. On the way to the ER, he said her condition seemed to improve. They sat in the parking lot outside the ER, talking over what to do. They drove around the town a bit as they talked, went to the Dairy Queen for an ice cream cone, and decided to return home.
Within an hour of returning to Hancock, Michelle’s condition worsened. A couple hours later, they were admitted to the SCMC emergency room. An x-ray of her lung showed she had COVID pneumonia in both lungs. Plans were made to transfer to a medical facility that could provide a higher level of care. At this point, her oxygen levels had fallen to around 88%. A normal level for blood oxygen content is 95% with at least 93% recommended to keep the baby healthy, Joe said.
At first, SCMC ran into a problem that has been common for hospitals throughout Minnesota – they couldn’t find her a bed in an advanced care facility. As SCMC was preparing a plan for her care in Morris, CentraCare in St. Cloud called saying a bed was available.
Sunday evening, she was admitted to CentraCare COVID-19 progressive unit and immediately put on oxygen. A progressive unit is a stage below the ICU. Because Joe had tested positive Oct. 23, he had to wait 10 days before being allowed to be at her side.
 
A rapid decline for Michelle
After two days in St. Cloud, she appeared to be improving, and by Oct. 28, Joe and Michelle were able to talk to each other over the internet. Then her health took a turn for the worse. October 29, a CentraCare doctor called Joe and told him his wife was “declining very rapidly and there was nothing they could do but offer her an experimental drug.” It was a treatment of last resort, he said.
“I told the doctor that I wanted him to do everything he could but that I just wanted to know what the side effects would be,” Joe said. He also wanted to know how it could affect their unborn child. He was told that it could lead to a staph infection. It had worked in about 80% of the women it has been tried on. However, he had no information on the side effects on the pregnancy or the baby, Joe said.
On Oct. 29, he was told that physicians would be intubating Michelle to help her breathe. She was sedated and given paralytic drugs to keep her relaxed while the ventilator breathed for her.
“At that time, I learned they had not put anyone on the ventilator who was pregnant,” he said. In earlier cases, they had taken the baby before the mother was put on a ventilator, Joe said. Doctors were hoping to get Michelle to 30 to 32 weeks before performing a C-section delivery.
When Joe finally was cleared to see his wife, she had been intubated and wasn’t aware he was at her side. Sitting with Michelle in her ICU room, Joe asked the doctors and nurses what all the pumps, machines, and monitors in the room were doing.
One of the monitors, he was told, kept track of her brain activity. He was told that if he talked to her, that at some level, she might recognize his voice, and that her brain activity would show a slight increase. “I paid attention to that a lot,” he said. 
Now that Joe could spend more time with his wife, his 12-year-old son stayed with his mother while Michelle and Joe’s 18-month-old daughter stayed either with his mother or his sister, Kristy. When he wasn’t staying overnight near the hospital, he would drive back and forth between St. Cloud and Hancock.
 
Complications but signs for hope
To prevent Michelle from getting blood clots, she had been put on the blood thinner Heparin. The drug complicated the medical decision for when a C-section could be performed to deliver the baby, Joe said. It would require her to be off the Heparin long enough for its blood-thining effects not to be a problem during the surgery.
Doctors were hoping to get her to 32 weeks in her pregnancy before the C-section, but her pregnancy was complicating her ability to breathe.
Friday, Nov. 12, and Saturday, Nov. 13, attempts to take Michelle off the ventilator didn’t work. At the same time, they were reducing her sedation. “They noticed that she kept asking them for me,” Joe said. “I told them I wanted to be there when they tried again. I knew it would help,” he said. 
The morning of Nov. 14, he headed to St. Cloud. “I was about 10 minutes from Sauk Centre. I was praying to God, ‘Please let this go smoothly, and I am going to be there soon.’ Not even five minutes after I made that prayer, the nurse called me. She said, “Joe, I have someone who wants to talk to you.’”
Her statement caused a moment of dread. “Then, all of a sudden, I could hear this faint voice,” he said. It was his wife. “She had a whisper of a voice.” Michelle was off the ventilator.
 “She said that she loved me, and she wanted me there. She was trying to say something else, but I couldn’t hear what she was saying. Then it just hit me; she was telling me to wear my seatbelt and obey the speed limit.” Her nurse came on the phone and told Joe that she nodded her head ‘yes’ and smiled.
When he arrived at the hospital, he was able to spend nearly eight hours at her side in the ICU room before visiting hours ended at 8 p.m.
 
At death’s doorstep
Sunday night, Nov. 14, Joe drove back to Hancock feeling good about his wife’s progress. At 5 a.m., Nov. 15, CentraCare called telling him Michelle was having a lot of anxiety, affecting her heart rate and lowering her oxygen levels. They put her back on the ventilator for the baby’s safety around 10:30 p.m., Sunday, he was told.
The ventilator was “maxed out” and there was nothing else they could do to improve her oxygen levels, he said.
A few hours later, he was told doctors had found an “organism” growth in her lungs. As they worked to identify it, she continued to decline. Tuesday morning, Nov. 16, Michelle’s doctors told Joe his wife had developed E.coli and staph infections in her lungs. 
Not long after that call, one of the specialists who had been overseeing Michelle’s case called Joe telling him, “It’s best that you get here right away because your wife is not doing good.” Joe’s mother joined him for the trip to St. Cloud.
He had also received a call from an obstetrician telling Joe that they were planning to do an emergency C-section to deliver the baby around 5 p.m.
Ten minutes from Sauk Centre, he received a call from Michelle’s doctors saying they didn’t know if she was going to make it. 
They also told him that she had developed an ARDS infection in her lungs. Now she had three deadly infections that “had completely consumed her lungs.” The x-ray of her lungs “were as white as a sheet of paper” showing they were filled with liquid, Joe said.
When Joe arrived at his wife’s side just after 4 p.m. in the ICU, he saw her oxygen levels were in the low 80s. As he watched, he noticed that her oxygen levels would rise, but then fall even lower. “I am watching her decline in real-time and so quickly, and they needed her to stay with us until 5 o’clock,” he said. That was when the doctors felt the blood-thinning effects of the Heparin would be low enough for a C-section.
As her condition declined further, the scheduled C-section turned into an emergency C-section in her ICU room, Joe said. 
Three medical teams staged the ICU room for the emergency C-section. “When they delivered the baby, she was immediately considered at risk of respiratory failure as well…” because her mother’s oxygen levels had fallen so low, Joe said. Physicians immediately intubated Ariella and moved her to a neonatal intensive care unit. Ariella was born 32 weeks and two days into Michelle’s pregnancy. She weighed 4 pounds and 1 ounce.
While Ariella was the name that Michelle and Joe had picked out for their daughter, he was hesitant to give the name to the hospital staff. “If Michelle took the worst turn, I wanted to be able to name the baby after her,” he said.
After the delivery, Michelle’s vital signs stabilized through the evening. “About three hours after the baby was taken, I was able to take my first breath,” Joe said. “Just because she was still alive. She was better than before the baby was born, but she was still in very critical condition.” 
Over the next couple days, she improved enough to provide some hope to Joe and the attending physicians that she might have a chance at life. Joe gave the hospital staff “Ariella” as the name for their daughter.
But doctors were also looking at Michelle’s severely inflamed lungs and concerned about the potential permanent damage. They told Joe they were looking to move her to a hospital where a double-lung transplant could be performed. They were also concerned about high carbon dioxide levels in her blood.
“It was at this point that my life really changed,” Joe said. “I didn’t have anything left in me until I literately broke. I went to God really hard and searched for more in faith.”
Michelle’s health improved very slowly as the hours passed, requiring less support from the ventilator. November 17 Ariella had her ventilator removed and was put on an external device to support her oxygen levels.
 
Finding a higher power
As he prayed for his wife, reaching for help, Joe said he started getting indications “that I know came from God’s lead. I was on the right path and Michelle was going to be okay. I had a really powerful vision. It told me Michelle was going to be okay, that she was going to get through this, and that she was going to come out way better than any would ever expect.”
However, Michelle was still in critical condition. Michelle’s doctor who was assessing her lung condition told Joe she would have to be transferred in the next couple days for the lung transplant. She would be going to a hospital that could put her on a heart-lung support machine if her lungs stopped functioning. “He told me to remember that there had only been one survivor out of 16 so far” among those who the operation had been performed on who were as critically ill as his wife.
“It hit me for a second, then I put my hand on his shoulder and said, ‘Hey, look, God spoke to me, and she is going to be just fine.’” That was the last time Joe talked with the doctor for about a week. Over the next few days, Michelle’s condition continued to improve, requiring less oxygen. 
While there were signs that her lung inflammation was lessening, plans for transfer to the University of Minnesota Hospitals for the transplant were progressing. However, because there were no beds available, the transfer was delayed.
Monday, Nov. 22, when doctors were planning to transfer her to the University of Minnesota, Michelle’s lung function had improved considerably. The infections she had faced were going away. The decision was made to keep her at CentraCare.  Also, Ariella was getting stronger and no longer needed oxygen support.
November 23, Michelle’s paralytics were being decreased as they worked toward getting her off the ventilator. Ariella was brought up to be with Michelle in her room for “skin-to-skin” contact. Joe prayed for the three of them. Later in the evening, her sedation was further reduced, and her paralytics taken off, Joe said. She was now mostly breathing on her own and not fighting the ventilator.
 
Better but challenging days
Over the next few days, hospital staff continued to bring Ariella up to her mother’s room for contact time, though Michelle remained heavily sedated. On one of those days, Joe reached down to pick Ariella up for her to go back to her room, and she let out a loud cry. He noticed that Michelle’s brain monitor reacted to her child's cry.
Michelle has since told him that she heard Ariella cry and tried to wake up but couldn’t.
On Thanksgiving Day, both Michelle and Ariella saw significant improvement. Michelle was becoming more alert and recognizing both her husband and Ariella. She cried when Ariella was taken back to her room that day, Joe said.
One week later, Nov. 28, at 11:44, Michelle was taken off the ventilator as her breathing further improved, Joe said. Doctors still had not ruled out Michelle’s possible need for a the lung transplant.
There were some very emotional days for Michelle as she slowly recovered. She was happy, sad, mad, confused, and delirious, but he said she would always call out for him. He could sometimes be in the room with her, but she wouldn’t recognize him. For as long as she had been sedated, doctors said she could be in a state of confusion for a couple weeks. “I told her, ‘When you hold my hand and hear my voice, you know who this is. Just feel safe and trust my voice when you hear me,’” Joe told his wife.
Gradually, but faster than the medical staff expected, Michelle’s physical and mental health improved, Joe said.
December 2 she was transferred from the ICU to a progressive room, a sign that her condition was markedly improved. She had her first meal since admission to CentraCare in St. Cloud Oct. 24. From there, her condition improved quickly, Joe said. She began walking with a walker and her voice was getting stronger.
On December 7 there was a conference with Michelle’s care team discussing when she would be discharged and going home. The last of the lines hooked up to her when she entered the hospital Oct. 24 were removed.
Two days later, Dec. 9, 46 days after being admitted to CentraCare’s hospital in St. Cloud, Michelle was back home in Hancock. One week later, Joe and Michelle went to the grocery store together. “Michelle is walking around the house without help,” her husband said. “She is very determined, stubborn, and wants to be independent.”
Her breathing is a lot better and the lung transplant is no longer being discussed. However, x-rays show there is still considerable cloudiness in her lungs. Still, her husband is cautiously optimistic that she will continue to progress in her recovery and that her lungs will heal. 
Joe and Michelle had already experienced a miracle with her return home. Seeing her lungs improve would be another little miracle they will pray for.
 
Waiting to bring Ariella home
Perhaps, sometime within the next week Joe and Michelle will be able to bring their daughter home from St. Cloud.
To bring Ariella home required her to reach 5 pounds to be in a car seat. She is now nearly 6 pounds. She also had to withstand sitting in a car seat for an hour without dropping her breathing and oxygen levels. One final requirement was that she maintain a consistent level of feeding. If she drank 80% of her bottle one time but the next time rejected it, they would have to continue to work with her to get a consistent level of feeding, Joe said.
While Ariella wasn’t home for Christmas, Joe and Michelle are hopeful that she will be in Hancock by the start of the New Year.
Joe is a 2003 graduated of Benson High School.