Braxton Bumgarner

Braxton is a 13-year-old 7th grader. 5 months ago on August 1, 2024, he said his knee hurt. The next day, it hurt worse, so his Dad took him to urgent care. The doctor basically told him he didn’t really know what pain was even though he said it was a 10. My husband asked if it could be an infection and he said no, he wasn’t showing any signs, even though he never did anything other than an x-ray. He told us to rotate Motrin and Tylenol for the pain.

2 days later we took him to our local ER because he was miserable from the pain. He also said it was hard to breathe. His heart rate was 160 when we got there. They said the shortness of breath was from the high heart rate. We got admitted with no mention of sepsis or what was causing this. The next day, August 5, the peds doctor for the day came in and immediately recognized there was a problem. At this point, his breathing was rapid, he was extremely weak, and his CRP was elevated.

We were transfered to a larger pediatric hospital 2 hours from home. As soon as their team arrived for transport, Braxton was placed on bipap. Still, no mention of sepsis or cause. We arrived at the larger hospital that afternoon and the doctors there told me he was extremely sick. He was intubated that night. The next day he had the first of 6 wash outs on his leg. He suffered from multiple lung collapses, DIC, a fistula in his lung, was placed on ECMO and CRRT, and had a life threatening surgery for a large infected blood clot while we were in the hospital. He almost didn’t make it, as the infected blood clot was pushing infected emboli into his lungs. After removing the blood clot, he finally started to improve little by little.

His lungs are scarred, but he didn’t end up needing a lung transplant like they once thought. He did have a trach for about 3 weeks. Today, almost 5 months later, he is almost unrecognizable compared to those first weeks in the hospital. Sepsis and staph tried hard to take him out and almost won. But he’s stronger. He’s getting ready to finally return to school and try to get back to “normal”. Although, we are still fighting the staph in his leg and we aren’t sure what the lasting effects will be on his lungs, we are so thankful he beat this and he’s still here with us. And we are in a much better place than 5 months ago when this all started.

Source: Monica Bumgarner- mom