Kelly, Hudson and Jaxson Baker
Lake Highlands High softball coach and Moss Haven PE teacher Kelly Baker is a favorite on both campuses, and now her students and their families are rallying around during Baker’s time of need.
On Sunday, March 17th, Baker took her 18-month-old son, Hudson, to Children’s Hospital in Plano with what she thought was dehydration due to a stomach virus. Once there, the medical team recognized the seriousness of his illness and transferred him by ambulance to Children’s Dallas.
Within 15 minutes of arriving, Baker was asked to leave the room as little Hudson went into cardiac arrest.
After 40 minutes of CPR, Hudson was revived and placed on an ECMO (extracorporeal membrane oxygenation) machine to bypass the heart and lung and circulate life-saving blood. Doctors diagnosed Hudson with viral myocarditis, and later found that mononucleosis had attacked his heart and caused the failure.
“Prior to this,” wrote Baker on a GoFundMe page set up to help pay for mounting medical bills, “Hudson was a perfectly healthy 18 month old, who was at the ball park playing on March 16.”
The road to recovery has been tough, admits Baker.
“Hudi was making lots of good strides the first week, but Saturday, March 23 he developed sepsis,” wrote Baker. Doctors removed the boy from ECMO with good initial results, but organ failure resulted in a return to the ECMO machine.
“The process for a heart transplant has been started and it seems that is the path we are headed,” shared Baker, who was forced to decide not to return to her beloved students for the remainder of the school year.
You may donate to help with Baker’s medical bills and living expenses here.
