Mom and baby reunited months after she gave birth in coma due to COVID in Wisconsin

Kelsey Townsend was 39 weeks pregnant when she tested positive for COVID-19 in October, WKOW reported. At first, her symptoms were pretty mild.

Her husband, Derek Townsend, and their 8-year-old daughter, Payton, had also tested positive, though their two younger children never fell ill, according to the outlet.

As Derek’s symptoms diminished, his wife’s took a turn for the worse. Derek took Kelsey to the hospital but she was quickly discharged, WKOW reported. But on Nov. 4, he knew he needed to take her back to University of Wisconsin Health in Madison.

“Early in the morning, I noticed that she was you know, losing color in her face,” he told WKOW. “She wasn’t getting oxygen.”

Kelsey was very ill and her pregnancy was full-term, the hospital said in a news release. Doctors swiftly put her into a coma.

Not long after, they delivered her daughter Lucy via cesarean section.

Derek said he didn’t realize how dire the situation was.

“I didn’t know that she wasn’t going to come back out of ICU for a while,” Derek told WKOW. “I thought, you know, she was gonna recover for a few hours, and then everything was gonna kind of come back.

“Having the baby inside her is what kept her going,” he added. “I’ve been told by doctors we were hours away from a different outcome that day we went in.”

Derek soon took Lucy home, but Kelsey stayed behind, still in a coma and fighting for her life, according to the hospital.

“Particularly early on it was unclear whether we were going to be able to support her through it,” Dr. Daniel McCarthy, a cardiothoracic surgeon at UW Health, said. “And then ultimately there was still a lot of uncertainty around what was the best way to get her safely out of the hospital and home.”

Kelsey would stay on life support for 75 days.

“The call was made pretty urgent,” Derek told WKOW. “And you could hear, you know, you could just tell the difference in the doctor’s voice.”

In December, Kelsey’s doctors began discussing the possibility that they may need to take more drastic measures to keep her alive.

They determined Kelsey would need a double lung transplant. Derek broke the news to Kelsey on Christmas Eve, and she was added to the transplant list, according to the hospital.

But days later, something miraculous happened: Kelsey started to improve.

She was moved from the ICU and taken off the ventilator in mid-January. Soon after, she was removed from the transplant list.

“We don’t know precisely what allowed her lungs to start recovering after two months of severe disease,” McCarthy said, according to WPR. “Our hope is that we better understand the nuances in each individual patient and identify either treatments for the those who don’t recover early on or at least ways to identify which patients still have hope of recovery and which patients have truly irreversible lung disease.”

Kelsey was discharged from the hospital on Jan. 27 into the arms of a thrilled Derek.

“I told her this morning I’m more nervous than I was on our wedding day or our first date,” he told UW Health as he awaited her released.

Video shows Derek greeting Kelsey with a passionate hug before thanking her care team and driving Kelsey home. There, she met her baby daughter for the very first time — nearly three months after giving birth.

The Townsends said they don’t know how they contracted COVID-19, WPR reported. They had dinner delivered to their home and avoided visiting loved ones. They always wore masks.

Their children went to in-person learning at school and Kelsey worked as an office manager, but they said there were few people she came into contact with, according to the outlet.

The Townsends said they hope their story will help other families avoid what they went through. They encourage others to take public health precautions and to get vaccinated once they’re able, WPR reported.

Kelsey is now getting occupational and physical therapy. She wears oxygen at home and is able to walk with assistance, according to the outlet.

Her doctors are optimistic she will make a full recovery.

“Her progress over the last couple weeks has been quite miraculous,” McCarthy said. “Although we don’t know what exactly lies ahead, the possibility of complete or near complete recovery and returning to a normal life is very real.”

This story was originally published February 2, 2021 at 9:03 AM with the headline "Mom and baby reunited months after she gave birth in coma due to COVID in Wisconsin."