December 20, 2024

NewsChannel 10 employee shares some good news for Christmas

AMARILLO, Texas (KEYU) -The holidays are a time of fellowship when people come together to celebrate.

For families, it can be an anxious time when the anticipation of Christmas is derailed by a sudden illness.

Dave’s friend and coworker Drew Helterbran shares a story of his family dealing with his father’s medical situation.

“About three or four months ago, he started having a lot of lower back pain,” Helterbran said. “It was quite debilitating for him. He couldn’t go to work because he is a pharmacist, he is on his feet all day. “He couldn’t take it anymore, so he stayed home and tried to rest and recover from it.”

“About six weeks ago, he started not being mentally present at all. “He would just, you know, stare into space, he wouldn’t respond if you said something to him, he would just fall asleep,” Helterbran said. “They did a CT scan of his head and found three different spots on his head that were actively bleeding, which was causing, you know, several miniature strokes.”

The condition became more serious and involved transfer to a hospital on the outskirts of the city.

Deteriorating conditions eventually led to the need for serious open heart surgery.

“So they put him on some intravenous antibiotics and after a couple of days they said, ‘Okay, it’s too far along to try to kill it with antibiotics, we’re going to have to replace the entire valve.’ ‘” Helterbran said.

With the situation escalating, it seemed daunting that there would be a homecoming before Christmas.

“I was talking to my mom on the phone and she said, ‘Yeah, worst case scenario, we’ll be back after New Year’s,’ like mid-January,” Helterbran said. “The doctors were a little worried because the heart was taking a little longer than normal; it usually takes about a day and a half for the heart to wake up.”

But this is where the good part of the news comes into play.

“In the end, his thing ended up taking about three days. He woke up and we were, my mother especially, very anxious. He’s waking up, he’s ready to walk a little. You know he wants to start doing physical therapy, walking and all that.” Helterbran said. “But it was very encouraging to see and hear him say, ‘Come on, I want to leave, you know, I’m ready to get back to my life, get back to my family.'”

“It was amazing. “Everything, everything turned out wonderfully and we are very happy to finally be able to take a breath at the end of all of this,” Helterbran said.

“It is absolutely good to be at home for 29 days in the hospital. So we’re thrilled to come home and see my family, see the house, see our dogs and just be home for Christmas,” said Andy Helterbran, Drew’s father.

His father is now recovering well and the family is reunited and looking forward to spending Christmas together at home. That’s good news.