Plea for help. Right now,
a Boise woman is in the ICU in Germany.
She got COVID and that triggered
other underlying health issues,
leaving her paralyzed.
Her dad says she's had gastric
issues over the years,
and today he's sharing her story in
hopes of getting help to bring her home.
Yeah, it's just heart rendering
if you ask Billy Burns what
the last couple of months
have been like for his family.
He describes it like this
has been a nightmare.
His daughter Victoria flew to Germany
in April for a German language course.
Unfortunately, she caught COVID.
She was hospitalized
after a few days cause that her
symptoms just continued to get worse
and she deteriorated to the point
that she was paralyzed. Couldn't
breathe on wrong for three weeks.
They treated her because
they thought she had Gouye
bar syndrome because the
symptoms were indicating that.
But there was no improvement.
Doctors ran more tests and Billy
says they later determined the 21
year old has a rare blood disease.
Porphyria is not curable,
but it is treatable.
So they are treating her
with blood infusions.
It's called heme, HEME.
It's a particular process, blood.
To clean out the porphyrins from
her blood system because it's like
GB S in that it causes the immune
system to attack the nervous system,
hence the pain and the paralysis.
Right now Victoria is in the
ICU in a German hospital. The
worst part was seeing her so we can
frail. She's probably be £85 now,
but
it's very emotional.
I guess it's just hard to
accept that something can happen
to someone so young,
so devastating. She's in the hospital,
still in the ICU,
still in stable but serious condition.
Sometime in the next two weeks they
hope to do a pneumo thorac exam,
which is basically.
To make sure her collapsed lung
has okayed or corrected itself.
And if it has, they will release
her for rehabilitation to fly
back to the States.
If it is not corrected,
then they will have to transfer
to a rehabilitation facility
somewhere in Germany.
And she's got a months long if not
longer rehabilitation process because
doctors tell Billy Victoria will
have to learn how to talk again.
Right now to communicate with her we
you have to use an alphabet chart.
And spell words out that where
she'll blink or nod her head.
You know, it's this letter that,
and that's the limit of her
communication right now.
She still has the after
the intubation was removed,
they put a tracheotomy on her
and now that's hooked up to a
machine helping her breathe.
And it's heartbreaking.
I spent three weeks with her
there before I came back.
And the good news is her mother's
there with her and her her
good friend Jonathan.
Billy says his insurance doesn't
pay for an air ambulance,
so they started to go fund me to
finance it, which he says costs
about $130,000. It's very expensive
because it requires a a nurse,
an experienced nurse.
It requires an EMT with
respiratory expertise,
not to mention 2 pilots
and jet fuel. The whole, the whole 9 yards,
despite the long road ahead for the family,
Billy says. They're staying hopeful.
She's a very strong spirited
young lady and we tell her, hey,
listen, keep your positivity.
Think about the future.
This too shall pass and that somewhere
down the road you'll look back on.
This is just, you know,
a bad experience, a bad dream,
and things will look brighter.
There's a rainbow at the end of the storm.
Yeah, And I mentioned that go fund me.
We'll have a link to it in this
story later on at ktvb.com.
But $30,000, it's very expensive,
as he mentioned. And.
And you just feel for this family, right?
Especially because she's
abroad so far away, Right.
And the mom is there right now.
But you know, Billy was saying
he was there for three weeks,
but just financially, you know,
it's expensive for them to be there.
Absolutely. Wow.
And I mean,
she sounds like she's really strong,
but it's gone through so much to
our best to the family for sure.