Monday, December 13, 2021

Miracle Man

Local 304 member Edwin Ng is a husband, father, grandfather, and PSW. He is also a miracle man

By Ruth Ann Ferguson and Alison Brown

The last thing Edwin Ng remembers before falling into a coma for five months is walking to an ambulance outside his home with paramedics. While in an unconscious state, he had a vision of Jesus asking him if he was ready to die.

“No, I’m not ready,” Edwin replied, thinking of his family. “And then I woke up.”

Edwin is a personal support worker (PSW) who has been employed at Roberta Place, a long term care facility in Barrie, Ontario, for 19 years. Many have heard of Roberta Place because this facility was the first in the country to have a COVID-19 outbreak of the alpha variant (B.1.1.7.), which originated in the United Kingdom. Over 230 people became infected, including 53 staff members, and 71 residents lost their lives.

Edwin was one of the staff members who contracted COVID.

“In the first week of January, following my first vaccine, I started feeling unwell,” he says. “I had shortness of breath, a fever, chills, the whole nine yards.”

Thinking that perhaps it was just some side effects, he pushed through the symptoms at home—even cleaning the house top to bottom.

But his wife, Samantha, knew it was serious.

“When Edwin told me he couldn’t breathe, I told him he had to go to the ER right away,” says Samantha. “I knew that he had COVID, and it wasn’t good.”

A few weeks after being admitted to the hospital in Barrie, Edwin was transferred to Toronto General. He experienced ups and downs in his condition, and weeks soon turned into months.

“It was such a hard time for us,” says Samantha. “I was driving from Barrie to Toronto General [a three-hour round trip] every day. And the hospital, during the third wave in April, was at maximum capacity and absolutely crazy. I could tell that the healthcare workers were tired, stressed, and burnt out.”

She recalls that in January, the hospital had around five people on ventilators (ECMO, or extracorporeal membrane oxygen machines—also known as artificial lungs). In April, there were over 30.

One of those patients on ECMO was Edwin. While struggling with the ravaging effects of COVID, his lungs were filling with blood clots, his kidneys were failing, and he was experiencing infection after infection.

“I was with him every day and seeing everything that was happening,” says Samantha. “Every day there was a different doctor and a different nurse, and I’d have to tell them what was going on. One doctor just looked at him and said, ‘It’s out of my hands. I don’t know how he’s going to survive another infection.’”

After months of Edwin’s condition worsening, Samantha got that dreaded phone call.

“One morning, I was making breakfast and about to drive down to Toronto,” she says. “And then I got the phone call.”

The doctor told her that Edwin was bleeding a lot, his blood pressure was dangerously low, they had to put chest tubes in to drain the blood out, and at the same time transfuse blood into him. They told her to get the family together and come say goodbye to Edwin.

“All I remember saying is, ‘I’m in Barrie, I’m in Barrie. Please do everything you can to keep him alive because I’m driving down from Barrie.’ I didn’t know if I was going to make it.”

Samantha got her parents to drive her and her children to the hospital.

“When we got there, we spent time with him before his CT scan,” she says. “He was still in a coma, but we just told him to keep fighting.”

As Edwin fought for his life, the doctors told Samantha and her children that they weren’t sure he would survive his last surgery, or if they’d be able to stop his bleeding.

“It was so scary,” says Samantha. “We were all just holding our breath.”

In Edwin’s vision, the figure of Jesus asked him if he was sure he wanted to go back to the land of the living.

“As soon as I said ‘yes,’ I woke up,” he says. “The next thing I knew, there were doctors around me asking if I gave my consent to have a double lung transplant. I was scared, because the last thing I remembered was walking to the ambulance parked outside my house. But I knew I would have to go through it for my family.”

Shortly after he came to, Edwin was able to FaceTime his wife, who had returned home because she was isolating. Since he couldn’t speak, he wrote to her on a little Boogie Board (a reusable writing tablet) and held it up to the camera.

“It was the first time I’d seen him up in months,” says Samantha. “And what he wrote on the Boogie Board was ‘We’re so blessed.’”

It was after that period in mid-April that Edwin started to improve so much that doctors were able to put him on the transplant list. He received a double lung transplant. A surgery that usually takes 14 hours or more was completed in just 7 hours.

“Everything started to fall into place after that,” says Samantha. “And it was go, go, go. Even the transplant itself went smoothly. The doctors were amazed at how well it went.”

Since that day, Edwin has not looked back. He has passed targets and goals that usually take weeks or months in mere days. He has surpassed all expectations. One doctor said, “I’ve never seen a guy dodge so many bullets.”

On June 2, 2021, Edwin the miracle man came home.

“It had been a really long day,” he recalls. “I’d had physio, a bunch of appointments at Toronto General, and then there was the traffic. I was so eager to get home after being in the hospital for five months.”

There was a parade in his honour, and he was overwhelmed and humbled at the outpouring of support. Crowds of people lined the streets outside his home and cheered.

“I had no idea what was going on,” says Edwin. “When we passed the first house on the block, I saw people waving at us. I thought it was just people visiting a neighbour or something. But then we passed the next house, and then the next house, and there were people everywhere waving and cheering and holding signs with my name on them. The street was packed with people—even people I didn’t know. It was all very overwhelming.”

Edwin and his family are astounded at the support from his coworkers. Sanja Goldie, a nurse at Roberta Place, started a GoFundMe account that has raised over $45,000 dollars. Over 700 people donated to support Edwin, including coworkers, people who know the Ng family, and even complete strangers.

Support has come from the community and from around the world. Emails, cards, and letters have come pouring in—some from as far away as the Middle East. Family members of the residents he cared for over the years have reached out.

Edwin is shocked that people recognize him when he goes out in the community. They stop and wish him well. He is thankful but is in amazement that it all happened. He admits that there is some sense of loss with not going to work every day, and he misses his residents and fellow members.

“I’m not going to pretend that it’s not hard work being a PSW, because it is,” says Edwin. “But I love it and it doesn’t feel like work. I love to make the residents happy, make them laugh, and lift their spirits. They’re like family to me.”

Many coworkers still stop by and visit, and that helps.

Edwin is home with a long road ahead, but he is doing well. He is starting to gain back some weight, which he says is because of his wife’s great cooking. While he is so very thankful for the great care that he received in hospitals and the rehab centre, the food—well, he says nothing compares to home cooking!

Edwin starts his morning in prayer and fills his day at home doing physiotherapy and chores around the house. Samantha says that she must remind him to slow down some days. In June, the couple celebrated their 26th wedding anniversary and went to The Keg for a special dinner.

Edwin is looking forward to getting his drivers license reinstated. When asked where he will go when that happens, he smiles and says, “I will drive my kids to school.”
That may not seem like a miracle to many, but for Edwin and his family, it is.

EXTRACORPOREAL MEMBRANE OXYGENATION

Extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) technology was developed in the late 1960s by a team led by Dr. Robert Bartlett. It was first used successfully in 1971 by a patient with severe lung dysfunction following a motorcycle accident. In 1976, it was also used for a baby who had severe lung injury, leading to its increased use in pediatric medicine.

In ECMO, blood is pumped outside a patient’s body to a heart-lung machine that removes carbon dioxide and sends oxygen-filled blood back to tissues in the body. Blood flows from the right side of the heart to the membrane oxygenator in the heart-lung machine, and then is rewarmed and sent back to the body. ECMO allows blood to bypass the heart and lungs, allowing these organs to rest and heal. It was used worldwide in the treatment of severe lung failure during the H1N1 influenza pandemic and has been used extensively in care for those with COVID-19.

Sources: mayoclinic.org, nm.org

6 STRANGE SURGERIES

Edwin’s surgery—a double lung transplant—was major, but not an unusual one for surgeons to perform. Here’s a look at six strange surgical procedures that have occurred throughout history.

1. Self surgery – In 1921, Dr. Evan O’Neill Kane took the scalpel to himself to prove that ether—the primary general anaesthetic at the time—was being used far too often. To test his theory, he operated on himself, removing his own appendix by propping himself up on the operating table with a mirror over his abdomen—and only using local anaesthetic. Then in 1932, at the age of 70, Dr. Kane performed an even more complicated procedure on himself to repair an inguinal hernia. He performed the surgery in under two hours. According to reports, he was talking and joking the entire time.

2. World’s longest surgery – In 1951, it’s believed that the record for the longest surgery ever performed happened in Chicago when a woman underwent a four-day operation to remove a giant ovarian cyst. The woman weighed 616 pounds before the surgery with a girth of nine feet. After the cyst removal, her weight went down to 308 pounds. The surgeons tapped the cyst to slowly drain fluid from it. It took four days to get about 200 pounds of fluid out of her body. They then removed the cyst, which weighed about 150 pounds.

3. Born again – In 2008, a pregnant woman found out that her baby had an enormous and deadly grapefruit-sized tumour growing out of her tailbone. The noncancerous tumour was draining the baby’s blood supply and would have killed her if doctors hadn’t intervened. In a rare and risky procedure, doctors at Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston anaesthetized the mother to relax her womb, removed her uterus outside of her body, opened it, and lifted 80 percent of the baby out to remove the tumour. They then returned the tiny baby, who weighed a quarter of a pound, back into the womb and closed the amniotic sac. The baby was “born again” 10 weeks later and was perfectly healthy.

4. Toe thumb – In 2010, an Irishman sawed off his thumb, damaging it so badly that surgeons were unable to reattach it. Living thumbless wasn’t an option, since he needed his thumbs to work. Surgeons at the Frenchay Hospital in Bristol, UK, took a toe from his left foot and attached it to his hand.

5. Tooth-in-eye – In 2013, a British man got a piece of scrap metal stuck in his right eye in a workplace accident, damaging his cornea. He underwent osteo-odonto-keratoprosthesis (OOKP) surgery, which involved removing his canine tooth and the surrounding bone, then drilling a hole in the tooth and inserting a plastic lens. This lens tooth was then implanted into his cheek, where it grew new blood vessels over several months. The lens was then removed from his cheek and implanted into his eye. Light was able to travel through the lens, completely restoring his vision.

6. Half of the brain removal – In 2016, an Australian teenager underwent hemispherectomy to stop daily seizures caused by epilepsy. Hemispherectomy involves the partial or total removal or disconnection of one of the two hemispheres of the brain. It is considered a radical and risky procedure that can take up to 12 hours to complete. The decision for the teen to have this radical procedure was prompted by a seizure that lasted nine hours.

Sources: medicalnewstoday.com, newsweek.com

Miracle Man

EXTRACORPOREAL MEMBRANE OXYGENATION

6 STRANGE SURGERIES

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