The fight of their lives

SIREN, Wis. – Over the past 10 months, Adam and Annie Hedlund, of Siren, have learned the unexpected can toss their lives into turmoil without a moment’s notice.
In October 2021, coronavirus struck the Hedlund household. As two young, healthy adults, the Hedlunds did not think too much about having COVID-19 at first.

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“Adam wasn’t feeling well for about a week,” Annie said. “He went in to the emergency room twice and was sent home. Then on Oct. 10, he was admitted to the Amery Hospital for pneumonia.”
Since that day last fall, Adam has not yet returned home. Instead, he has been in three different hospitals fighting for his life.
The Hedlunds milk 100 cows and farm 530 acres on their Polk County dairy farm.
Just days before Adam was admitted to the hospital, the couple learned Annie was pregnant with their third child. With then 2-year-old Azra and 1-year-old Analiese at home, Annie’s plate was getting full; little did she know, it was just the beginning.
After several days at the hospital in Amery, it was determined that Adam needed to be in the intensive care unit and placed on a ventilator. The nearest available ICU bed was at the Howard Young Medical Center in Minocqua, and Adam was flown there. From the time he entered ICU, he was in isolation, and Annie was unable to visit.
While in the ICU and ventilated at Howard Young, Adam did not make the progress doctors wanted. On Oct. 23, 2021, he was transferred to Froedtert Hospital in Milwaukee where he was placed on extracorporeal membrane oxygenation, in addition to the ventilator, which could further oxygenate his blood.
Things went from bad to worse, and on Nov. 25, 2021, Annie received a call from his doctor advising her that Adam was bleeding profusely from his tracheostomy site. The bleeding appeared to be coming from a lower lobe of his badly damaged lungs.
The doctor informed her that if he continued bleeding, they would need to come and say their goodbyes.
“It was a miracle; the bleeding finally stopped,” she said.
Following that event, Adam was heavily sedated and placed into a coma. Because of the bleeding, he had been removed from the ventilator and was relying solely on ECMO to provide oxygen to his body.
“He was paralyzed, he was alive, but he wasn’t truly breathing; his chest was not moving,” Annie said. “It was only the ECMO keeping him alive.”
Adam was kept in the coma until early January when they began the process of allowing him to wake up. Adam did not handle coming out of sedation well.
As Adam came out of sedation, doctors felt his lungs were continuing to deteriorate. They put Adam on an extensive rehab regiment, preparing him to be placed on the list for a double lung transplant. The doctors told Annie that was the only way Adam would leave the hospital.
Adam made progress in his therapy and was standing and taking steps by the end of January. He was placed on the transplant list in March and underwent a double lung transplant April 5.
The transplant was traumatic due to the extensive damage to Adam’s lungs.
“His lungs were stuck to his chest cavity with all the scar tissue,” Annie said. “They basically had to be scraped off. There was a lot of blood loss again. The surgeon said he had done over 200 transplants and never had one so complicated, that Adam’s was the worst he’d experienced.”
After two weeks, Adam’s new right lung showed signs of bruising and trauma, and Adam was relisted for a second right lung transplant. He received a new right lung April 23. That surgery was successful, and six months to the day after starting ECMO, Adam was removed from the machine.
At the time of Adam’s transplants, Annie was in the ninth month of her pregnancy, facing the prospect of giving birth without her husband at her side.
“I hoped every day that he would be able to be there for the birth of the baby,” Annie said. “And every day I realized that was not going to happen.”
In May, while his dad was hospitalized in the southeast corner of the state, the Hedlunds’ son, Atlas, made his entrance into the world in the northwest corner of the state. The family was together virtually for the birth.
Atlas was placed in the newborn ICU due to high levels of bilirubin, just three points away from needing his own blood transfusion.
After 10 months of hospitalization, Adam continues to battle his way home. Because of the severe blood loss he has suffered, he has been placed on full-time kidney dialysis. A biopsy of his right lung shows minor signs of rejection, and Adam is undergoing photopheresis to treat the rejection issues. He remains ventilated and in ICU.
“They are working on weaning him off the ventilator, a process that he is hating,” Annie said. “Once he is off the ventilator, they can move him out of ICU.”
Annie has taken Atlas to meet his dad, but Azra and Analiese have not seen their dad since he left home the day he was admitted to the hospital in Amery.
“We are able to do video chatting with Adam and the girls, but while he has been ventilated, he cannot talk,” Annie said. “When he is moved out of ICU, I will take the girls to see him.”
Throughout Adam’s illness, Annie has kept the farm going with help from family and friends. Adam’s dad has come out of retirement to help her on the farm, and they have a hired girl who helps with milking and feeding calves. Feed mixing has been split between Adam’s close friend and his brother-in-law. A neighboring farmer took care of spreading manure for the family last fall. Annie’s and Adam’s moms help watch the kids, giving Annie time to attend to the farm and travel to visit Adam.
Members of the Hedlunds’ church are planning a benefit for the couple to help offset some of the surmounting medical bills.
“Adam is so strong,” Annie said. “How he is still alive is literally a miracle. Even his doctors have no idea how he has made it this far.”