Her husband was told she wouldn’t make it, but 'maximum life support’ saved Jennifer Streeter’s life
In 2019, Jennifer Streeter was in Las Vegas with her husband and friends for a short getaway. When she returned to her home in Rogers, Minnesota, she found herself feeling unusually tired. She initially thought she was exhausted from traveling and walking more than usual – until she spiked a fever of 101 degrees.
Ever since she had her spleen removed when she had Hodgkin’s lymphoma at age 19, Jennifer, now 53, has been cautious about preventing infection. “I always knew that if I got a fever of 101 or higher, I was supposed to be seen by a doctor that day,” she said.
Jennifer went to urgent care near her home, but the doctor couldn’t find the cause of her illness. She was given some medication for her virus symptoms and went home. Still feeling sick two days later, she went to Maple Grove Hospital. She was admitted for respiratory problems and possible pneumonia and stayed overnight. Her condition continued to worsen, so she was transferred to North Memorial Medical Center for a higher level of care. This time, she was admitted to the intensive care unit. She was at North Memorial for several days, but she continued to worsen.
“The doctor even called my husband and said, ‘You need to get the kids and bring them down. She's not doing good. And she probably won't make it through the night.’”
Doctors decided to transfer Jennifer to M Health Fairview University of Minnesota Medical Center. She woke up there about three weeks later. She had been sedated and on put on an extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) machine. The machine allowed her lungs to recover from what turned out to be severe pneumonia from adenovirus. She also had acute respiratory distress syndrome and sepsis.
What is ECMO?
ECMO is a machine that does the job of the heart and/or lungs, so that a person’s body can rest and heal from conditions like pneumonia, sepsis, burns, or cardiac arrest. It’s also used while patients are waiting for a heart or lung transplant. The machine pumps blood out of the body to add oxygen and remove carbon dioxide then returns the blood to the body.
“Think of ECMO as maximum life support,” said Melissa Brunsvold, MD, system ECMO medical director and general and critical care surgeon with M Health Fairview who treated Jennifer. Brunsvold is also a professor at the University of Minnesota Medical School. “If doctors are recommending ECMO, then that's typically a dire situation. ECMO is not curative in any way. It just buys time for the lungs to rest.”
A 2010 study found that ECMO could increase survival rates of people with respiratory failure. It’s also a cost-effective option compared to other care options. At M Health Fairview, when patients come in with respiratory failure, healthcare providers try strategies like prone positioning and low-pressure ventilation to help them breathe.
“But if it's not working, we transfer them to an ECMO center early,” Brunsvold said. “Only a few hospital systems in the state have these centers. We’re one of them.”
M Health Fairview treats about 250 patients with ECMO per year. About 20 to 30 of them are in respiratory failure. Our health system is widely recognized as one of the world’s leading ECMO Centers. In 2021, our health system received a platinum-level Center of Excellence designation – the highest possible – from the Extracorporeal Life Support Organization (ELSO). Brunsvold and her team will be receiving platinum-level Center of Excellence again in September 2024.
To treat sudden cardiac arrest patients in the field, M Health Fairview also operates a “mobile ECMO” program in collaboration with other health systems and the Helmsley Charitable Trust that brings ECMO technology directly to patients outside the hospital, buying critical time and saving lives.
Life after ECMO
Doctors can usually tell after a week or two if ECMO is working and the patient will survive, Brunsvold said. People can come off ECMO and go on to live normal, healthy lives, Brunsvold said. She had a drowning patient who was back to work as a tree trimmer two months later. The most common issue is weakness from spending weeks in the hospital and recovering from an illness or injury. Most people regain strength in physical therapy before going home.
“For the most part, there aren't as many long-term complications of ECMO as there are the underlying disease, whatever caused people to get sick in the first,” Brunsvold said.
Jennifer was in the hospital for 45 days from her initial admission, transfer to M Health Fairview University of Minnesota Medical Center and rehabilitation after. She has since joined ECMO survivor groups. She learned that hair loss, weight gain, and mental health issues are common after ECMO. But Jennifer says her lungs are healthy now.
“I'm very, very lucky with that and my heart,” she said. “I saw a cardiologist shortly after. And he said, there's no reason I need to come back to him because I'm doing fine.”
