What began as a weekend trip to Steamboat Springs for her daughter’s soccer tournament became the start of a medical crisis that nearly took Megan C.’s life.
At 41, Megan was doing what so many mothers do: pushing through. For months, she had been dealing with a lingering cough, assuming it was a stubborn cold that would eventually pass. As a single mother of two, Blake and Rhyder, she was balancing work, parenting and the demands of daily life, and her own health kept slipping down the list.
But during that trip, something changed. Her coughing worsened. The exhaustion deepened. After returning home, she became increasingly weak, lethargic and short of breath. One morning, her son found her on the floor, unable to get up, and he called for help.
Megan was first taken to a nearby hospital, then transferred for a higher level of care as doctors worked to understand what was happening. She was critically ill with pneumonia and adenovirus. Doctors later discovered a blocked kidney and a serious secondary infection. As her condition worsened, her care team determined she needed extracorporeal membrane oxygenation, or ECMO, a highly specialized form of life support used when the heart or lungs need time and support to heal.
She was transferred to HCA HealthONE Aurora, where the ECMO team took over her care. Megan remembers very little from the most critical stretch of her illness. Much of what she knows now came from her family and care team. Her loved ones were told that without ECMO, she likely would not survive.
Instead, ECMO gave her a chance. When Megan first woke up, she was still on the machine. She could not speak and did not understand what had happened. Frightened and disoriented, she remembers the nurses helping calm her and gently explain where she was and what was happening.
“They were very, very sweet and very good to me,” Megan said. “Every single one of them was great.”
Recovery came step by step. Megan focused on improving her oxygen levels, coming off ECMO, breathing more independently, speaking again, standing again and eventually walking. After nearly two months across the hospital, respiratory rehab and physical rehabilitation, she was finally able to go home.
Today, Megan says she is doing very well overall. She is back to working, driving, and spending time with Blake, Rhyder, and her beloved dogs. She still has some lasting effects from her illness, but she is grateful for how far she has come and for the team at HCA HealthONE Aurora who helped make that recovery possible.
“I really just think that they were all amazing,” she said. “It was definitely the place that I was supposed to be. My family is very thankful, and so am I.”
For Megan, ECMO gave her care team time to treat the infections overwhelming her body, gave her lungs time to heal, and gave her more time with the people waiting for her at home. That time meant everything.