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Mother saved by ECMO therapy after nearly dying on way to operating room

A mother of two is alive with help from ECMO therapy that saved her from dying in the ER.

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (KTHV) — Wendy Chapman of Lonoke is not one for the spotlight. She reluctantly agreed to tell her story so that more peoples' lives might be saved.

She was on death's door after she had attended an ER for the flu and went to the CHI St. Vincent the next morning.

"Cause I was screamin' with my back hurtin', my eyes rollin' in the back of my head," Chapman said.

Her medical state changed so fast that her life was in danger, according to Dr. Thurston Bauer, a cardiothoracic surgeon at CHI St. Vincent.

"The progression of the problem that you had in your lungs was incredibly fast," Dr. Bauer said to Chapman.

Dr. Bauer was brought in because the ER doctors were fighting a losing battle with what they thought was the flu. Wendy was going into acute respiratory failure.

"She was dying on the way to the operating room," Dr. Bauer said.

Immediately, she was hooked up to an ECMO machine.

"More or less taking over the work of the patient's lungs," Dr. Bauer said.

Tubes are inserted and blood leaves the patient's body. It then circulates through the machine and back into the patient at seven liters per minute.

The therapy worked, saving Chapman's life just in time.

"I really believe that even ten minutes longer might have been too long," Dr. Bauer said.

Chapman knows that she owes her life to the ECMO machine.

"If it wasn't for that machine, I probably wouldn't be here," Chapman said.

She was passed out and incoherent for 12 days. She finally woke up on the 13th day.

"I was wondering where I was and what was going on," Chapman said.

Once she realized what had happened, the mother of two was immediately thankful.

"I was glad I was still alive to be their mom," Chapman said.

The feeling he gets from stories like this is why Dr. Bauer goes to work each day, he said.

It is important for people to hear these stories he said.

"I would hate to think that somebody died because they didn't know that we could do this," Dr. Bauer said.

Chapman has been given a clean bill of health. Doctors believe she had a virus that was defeated because the ECMO machine gave her lungs time to heal.

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