Twenty-two-month-old Jeremy Wilson moved out of his hospital room Monday, and brought a little hospital home.
The plump-faced child, born nine weeks premature and dependent on a ventilator to breathe, went to his Roselle home to stay after spending almost his entire life in hospitals.
Among the baskets of toys, framed clown pictures and the wooden crib in his bedroom are machines that will keep air and medicine going to his lungs through the tubing attached to his throat.
”We`re setting up a little intensive care unit in the home,” said Dr. Raoul Wolf, one of the doctors who treated Jeremy during his six-month stay at La Rabida Children`s Hospital and Research Center. ”We`re taking people with no medical background and asking them to be caregivers.”
Filling that role will be Jeremy`s parents, Heidi and Jeff Wilson, and a home nurse from Concerned Care Inc. in Skokie.
”I`m getting good at this,” Heidi Wilson said Monday as she talked about the equipment that will sustain Jeremy`s life. ”I`m just ecstatic. There are no words for this. He`s never seen this room before.”
Jeremy was home for nine days a year ago. But he went into respiratory distress and had to be hospitalized again last Feb. 15.
”He almost passed away that day,” Jeremy`s mother said. ”We didn`t think he`d make it through that night and . . . we went ahead and had him baptized at the hospital.”
When Jeremy was born, he weighed 2.2 pounds and had only 10 percent lung capacity. Had he been born 10 years ago, he probably would have died, Dr. Wolf said, but medical technology and expertise gave him life, albeit with complications.
As the complications are ironed out, Jeremy will grow new lung tissue and should be able to breathe on his own in a few years. He`ll be able to live a normal life, but will likely suffer from asthma and will be at greater risk than most children for pneumonia, Wolf explained.
Home care will be stressful for the Wilsons, but it`s psychologically healthier for Jeremy and less expensive. Intensive care units in hospitals cost about $60,000 a month. At home, costs will include the $20,000 a month for equipment, and the cost of Jeremy`s 24-hour home nursing care for six months, with half-day care later.
The Wilson`s $1 million health insurance ran out a year ago. Since then, the Illinois Department of Public Aid has been paying the medical bills associated with Jeremy`s survival.
The Homeward Bound Unit at La Rabida, and units like it, train parents and the child to return to the home setting. Heidi Wilson visited Jeremy there every other day, working with the staff of pulmonologists, pediatricians, respiratory and rehabilitation therapists, social workers and psychologists to prepare for his homecoming.
Jeremy spent Monday playing with toys in his crib, riding on a plastic horse, getting acquainted with his 6-year-old brother Josh and meeting Leo, the family dog.
”I think he`s going to be fine,” his father said. ”This house is going to be filled with relatives this week. A lot of the family hasn`t met him yet.”
