Karla Taylor-Bauman, 50, spent over 50 days in the hospital, including 21 days on a ventilator in an induced coma. Despite her doctor’s grim assessment of her condition as having been “as close to brain dead as you get without being brain dead”, she miraculously survived.
Her recovery is nothing short of a miracle ever since the Lake Villa woman suddenly opened her eyes and whispered “What’s going on? Where am I?”
Bauman had remembered seeing strange creatures from outer space dressed in blue space suits and visors floating around her hospital room. These “strange creatures” that Bauman recalled were actually medical staff covered from head to toe in protective gear monitoring her vital signs within the sterile hospital room.
Bauman’s ordeal began on April 2nd when she was admitted at Vista Medical Center East in Waukegan, Illinois. She initially suffered from a high fever due to the coronavirus, which quickly turned into a severe breathing issue that required Bauman to be immediately ventilated. Her condition continued to deteriorate further, forcing doctors to then place her into a drug-induced coma, hoping to minimize the stress to her vital organs.
Unfortunately, her condition continued to deteriorate when her kidneys suddenly stopped functioning, resulting in an erratic heartbeat. Doctors feared she might have also suffered brain damage due to all of her vital signs virtually shutting down simultaneously.
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Doctors immediately contacted her husband, Jevon Bauman, to share with him their grim prognosis.
“Her doctors at Vista were more or less telling me to brace for her passing,” Jevon recalled. “When Karla was hospitalized, especially the first two or three weeks, here I am, basically with my wife’s death staring me in the face.”
Karla’s stepfather, Carlos Escalante, also remembered, “Doctors said we had to let her go because her brain was dead. We kept the faith that a miracle could happen, and on the sixth day she started waking up.”
Thankfully, Karla Taylor-Bauman was soon breathing on her own, and doctors decided to remove her from the ventilator which had kept her alive for 3 weeks. Her vital signs also miraculously began to improve.
“I almost lost her,” said her tearful husband. “I still have her by the grace of God.”
Karla Taylor-Bauman, 50, of Lake Villa, still faces a tough recovery four months after getting out of the hospital. But, unable to work, she’s now facing foreclosure.
— Ashlee Rezin (@Ashlee_Rezin) October 2, 2020
She got her coronavirus miracle, surviving 3 weeks in a coma. Then came the hard part. https://t.co/O2EzdmLPpk pic.twitter.com/Hqa0OCy9zD
Karla’s kidneys are fully functional again. She needs some physical therapy for some muscle weakness after spending nearly 2 months in a hospital bed, but otherwise she’s fully healed and, in some cases, even better.
“My brain is working better than ever. I feel almost like somebody went inside my body and reprogrammed everything brand new,” she says.
“Doctors pronounced me dead,” she said. Karla goes on to explain, “My heart stopped. My kidneys failed. My whole body just shut down, and yet here I am. To me, it’s a miracle.”
Her family wants to share this miracle woman’s story. Even when it looked bleak, her family kept praying and trusting in God.
“Don’t lose your faith. Keep believing,” Carlos Escalante said. “Miracles happen. My stepdaughter is a miracle.”
After Karla was released from the hospital, she began receiving bills from her near-death experience that amounted to about $240,000, despite having health insurance.
However, another miracle was about to take place after a Chicago Sun-Times reporter asked the hospital about the tab for her care.
“I thought maybe they were going to say they will work with me and set up a payment plan,” Karla surmised.
Instead, she was told her balance owed was now zero. “I just started crying because I really was not expecting that.”