BOISE, Idaho — A Boise woman is in the ICU in Germany. Her dad, Billy Burns told KTVB, she got COVID and that triggered other underlying health issues, leaving her paralyzed.
“It has been a nightmare,” Burns said. He added, she's had gastric issues over the years. Now, he's sharing her story in hopes of getting help to bring her home. “It's just heart wrenching,” Burns said.
His daughter Victoria flew to Germany in April for a German language course.
“Unfortunately, she got COVID, she was hospitalized after a few days because of her symptoms is continued to get worse and she deteriorated to the point that she was paralyzed, couldn't breathe on their own,” Burns said. “For three weeks, they treated her because they thought she had Guillain-Barre syndrome, because the symptoms were indicating that,” Burns said.
However, there was no improvement. Doctors ran more tests and later determined the 21-year-old has a rare blood disease, according to Burns.
“Porphyria is not curable, but it is treatable,” Burns said. “So, they are treating her with blood infusions, it's called heme, a particular process blood to clean out the porphyrins from a blood system, because it's like GBS and that causes the immune system to attack the nervous system, hence the pain and the paralysis.”
Victoria is still in the ICU in a German hospital.
“The worst part was seeing her so weak and frail,” Burns said. “She’s probably 85 pounds, but it's very emotional, I guess it's just hard to accept that something can happen to someone so young. so devastating.”
He adds in the next two weeks, doctors hope to do a pneumothorax exam to make sure her collapse has corrected itself and if it has, they will release her for rehabilitation to fly back to the states, if it is not corrected, then they will have to transfer to a rehabilitation facility in Germany. Victoria has a months-long if not longer, rehabilitation process, because doctors tell Burns, Victoria will have to learn how to talk again.
“Right now, to communicate, we have to use an alphabet chart and spell words out that way,” Burns said. “She'll blink or nod her head, and that's the limit of her communication right now, after the intubation was removed, they put a tracheotomy on her and now that's hooked up to a machine helping her to breathe.”
Burns spent three weeks in Germany with his daughter before he had to come back. His wife and a close friend of Victoria’s are still with her in Germany. He told KTVB, his insurance doesn't pay for an air ambulance, so they started a GoFundMe to finance it which he said costs about $130,000.00.
“It's very expensive, because it requires a nurse, an experienced nurse and requires an EMT with respiratory expertise. not to mention two pilots and jet fuel the whole nine yards,” Burns said.
Despite the long road ahead for the family, they’re staying hopeful.
“She's a very strong, spirited young lady and we tell her to ‘keep your positivity, think about the future and this too shall pass and at some point, down the road, you'll look back on this as just, you know, a bad experience a bad dream and things a little bit brighter, there's a rainbow at the end of the storm, Burns said.’” You can find the GoFundMe page here.
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