- Posted on April 8, 2024
Patient Stories: Nate Bean
A young dad, a harrowing infection, and a care team that never gave up
Nate Bean and his wife Renée were eating sandwiches in the cafeteria at St. Mary’s General Hospital when a nurse looked over at him with a bewildered expression.
She did a double take, then another.
“She looked at me and said: ‘You’re not supposed to be here,’” Nate recalls.
“With the way I had come into the hospital weeks before, it was hard to believe that I had survived.”
The quick deterioration
Nate, a 44-year-old father of two young girls, was experiencing flu-like symptoms along with the rest of his family over Thanksgiving weekend in 2023.
But while his wife and daughters soon improved, Nate deteriorated quickly.
He felt short of breath. He gasped for air but couldn’t fill his lungs. His body ached. He felt as though he was drowning. That’s when Renée called 911.
Paramedics rushed Nate to St. Mary’s where his diagnosis was uncovered: a secondary pneumonia infection that was turning into sepsis.
Nate was in multiorgan failure.
“My kidneys were failing, my lungs were failing, I was in septic shock,” Nate says.
“I remember up until about a minute before they intubated me. Then I don’t remember anything until I woke up – two weeks later.”
The calm before the storm
Critical care staff at St. Mary’s worked furiously to keep Nate alive as his body shut down.
Over the following week, Nate’s condition appeared to improve. Then moments later, it took a turn.
“He was as sick as you get without dying,” says Dr. Robert Chernish, Nate’s critical care doctor. “We had this calm before the storm and then about six days in, we just couldn’t get him enough oxygen anymore.
“We had one choice left.”
The Hail Mary
Dr. Chernish urged Toronto General to admit Nate for ECMO (Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation), a form of life support. Because only a handful of patients require ECMO each year, few hospitals can handle the intense workload that comes with keeping a patient on the machine.
Nate’s chances of survival when he left St. Mary’s were about 20 per cent, Dr. Chernish estimates. As Nate puts it, transferring to Toronto was “a last-ditch effort – a Hail Mary.”
It paid off.
After a week on ECMO, Nate began to stabilize and was transferred back to St. Mary’s to recover.
He was weak from his time on life support and needed to relearn to walk and eat solid food again. But he was alive.
The birthday
As Nate approached the one-month mark of his critical care journey, he was getting antsy.
Next to his bed sat a hand-drawn invitation to his daughter’s fourth birthday party at the end of November: “Please come to my party. You will be my present,” read the card, a plea that motivated Nate to get back home.
“There were times I worried I wouldn’t see my girls again,” he says. “But St. Mary’s made sure I didn’t miss that party. They made sure I was there to carry the cake.”
The progress
Months later, Nate is back to work full-time. He takes his daughters to school and daycare. He’s there for them when they get back home.
At a follow-up appointment in February, Dr. Chernish marveled at Nate’s progress. While most patients don’t regain full lung function for more than a year after sustaining Nate’s damage, his chest X-ray was completely normal within four months.
“The way he bounced back, I’ve never seen anything like that,” Dr. Chernish says.
The thank you
Weeks after Nate’s homecoming, his family donated to St. Mary’s as “a tangible representation of our appreciation,” says his father, Bill.
“It’s more than a box of chocolates or flowers. I want them to know we recognize how important St. Mary’s is to my family.”
Nate has a renewed appreciation for life, and he’s grateful for the way St. Mary’s not only cared for him, but for his family too.
“I went through trauma, but they went through their own trauma seeing me like that,” Nate says. “St. Mary’s didn’t give up on me; they didn’t give up on my family. They saved my life.
“All I can say is thank you.”
Are you a Grateful Patient like Nate? Share your story or a message of thanks to St. Mary’s staff.
