Patient stories: How ECMO offered Katherine Greenwood a chance for a miracle

Katherine Greenwood and her son Mason spent her birthday on a cruise in Alaska. When they returned, Katherine came down with the flu.

Instead of getting better, she kept getting worse, until finally she felt unable to breathe.

After an ambulance ride to the hospital, she was diagnosed with double pneumonia and rapidly went into respiratory failure. In an effort to save her life, her medical team put her on ECMO, or Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation. ECMO is a life support system that acts as the heart and lungs for critically ill patients, taking blood from the body, removing carbon dioxide and adding oxygen, then returning it. This process gives the body its best chance at healing while it can rest without having to work to keep lungs working and heart beating.

Katherine was on ECMO for 38 days, a truly significant number, as most ECMO patients aren’t on life support for that long. Prisma Health’s physicians spoke with Mason continually as he visited every day, discussing the ongoing treatment with him and whether or not to keep moving forward, hoping for recovery.

“When she was in that unit, she got the best care they could have provided,” Mason Greenwood said. “Some days were good, some were bad. I’d come in every day, sitting with her. The doctors and nurses were always there outside the door, if you needed something or to check on her.”

Katherine Greenwood is thankful for the care Prisma Health provided during this terrible time. After she came off of ECMO, she was transferred to a pulmonary rehabilitation center. In four weeks, she was off the trach, the ventilator, no longer had a feeding tube and was able to move into physical rehabilitation.

“My journey is called the breath of life,” said Katherine Greenwood. “Prisma Health gave me that life and that breath back, along with God healing me every day.” When she returns for further care, it’s with a smile and with the knowledge that she is a walking miracle and a symbol of what’s possible with modern medicine and compassionate care.