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About East Oregonian : E.O. (Pendleton, OR) 1888-current | View Entire Issue (Jan. 22, 2015)
Page 6A OFF PAGE ONE East Oregonian FLU: Cheree spent 21 days in the hospital Continued from 1A crashed and “she all but stopped breathing,” Jere- my recalls. “Now, it was an emergency situation. The prognosis was extremely bad — the doctor said he didn’t think she would survive the night. They called Life Flight.” Cheree doesn’t remember any of this or what came next. At Oregon Health & Sci- ence University in Portland, the Umatilla High School graduate lay in a medically induced coma. A test con- developed into Acute Respi- ratory Distress Syndrome, a sudden failure of the respira- tory system that often kills its victims. Her family was told to prepare for the worst. Jere- my’s mind reeled. “I love her more than oxy- gen,” Jeremy said. “Nothing else holds any value when your best friend is dying.” As he talked, he shot an adoring look at Cheree who sat next to him on a leather couch in their Hermiston home. She smiled at him and took over the narration. Cheree said she learned after the worst was over that Jeremy had been de- terminedly optimistic and focused on every aspect of her care during her hospital- ization. “Without him, I wouldn’t be here,” she said. “He was a huge advocate for me.” Jeremy, along with Cher- ee’s sister and two brothers, had taken an active role. The little team showed up at morning rounds, grilled the doctors and worked to un- derstand every detail. At one point, Jeremy said he noticed Cheree’s day and night doctors were using slightly different protocols and he insisted they choose one. He also tried to infuse the nurses with Team Cheree spirit. “I told them, ‘If you don’t believe 100 percent that she’s going to walk out of this room, I don’t want you near her,’” Jeremy remembers saying. He scrubbed up and donned gown, booties and mask to enter the ICU where Cheree lay in a special bed that encased her body, rocked her back and forth and allowed her to lay on her stomach for long periods to - mulated in the lungs. When the bed, Jeremy could see his wife’s face, feet and part of a tattoo on her shoulder. In that position, he talked to Cher- ee and shared encouraging Facebook comments posted by friends. “I realized there were things left unsaid,” Jeremy said. “All I wanted was to tell her I loved her and know she heard it.” Jeremy had good reason to be anxious. OHSU’s Chief of Pulmonary and Critical Care, Dr. David Jacoby, said overall mortality for people with ARDS is about 30 per- cent. Some who live are nev- er the same. “Lung injury is often se- vere, requiring prolonged time on mechanical ventila- tion,” Jacoby said. “Some- times the lung injury is so bad that the patient can never get off the ventilator.” after two weeks, feeling confused when she saw her sister and brother standing bedside. She noticed a poster of her volleyball team taped to the wall. She remembers asking for an orange Slurpee — something she had never craved before. Before this point, Jeremy said, her improvement had been glacial, “millimeters on a scale of miles.” Now, her recovery sped into over- drive. “It was all her,” Jeremy said. “She’s so tough. She got better every two hours. She was weaned from the ventilator before anyone thought possible.” Cheree spent 21 days in the hospital and spent months regaining her strength and voice. Jeremy took two months of sick leave. They remain in awe of family and friends who cared for the couple’s children and supplied meals for months. Both Cheree and Jere- my say their faith in God remains not only intact, but strengthened. “We both feel like I got sick and survived for a rea- son,” Cheree said. They know ARDS is of- ten fatal. While at OHSU, Jeremy got to know the spouse of another ARDS patient who eventually died. This fall, Cheree attended the funeral of a childhood friend who lost the battle They say the odyssey has shifted their priorities. “We realized how most stuff just doesn’t matter,” Jeremy said. “We reevaluated every- thing in our lives and decid- ed to come home,” Cheree said. The couple sold their house in the The Dalles and moved to Hermiston, where Jeremy had grown up. Cher- ee was raised just down the highway in Umatilla. Jeremy now works as Hermiston Fire & Emergen- cy Services. Cheree, a year out from her brutal battle, is feeling livelier and can envi- sion going back to coaching eventually. Flu shots are no longer optional for Cheree and Jer- emy. She hadn’t gotten one that winter, but now … “Every year,” Jeremy said. “Forever.” “Yes,” Cheree said. OHSU’s Jacoby would applaud that decision. “While I’m not certain I could say that you could never get critically ill from shot,” he said, “there is no doubt that the likelihood is shot.” ——— Contact Kathy Aney at kaney@eastoregonian.com or call 541-966-0810. ENERGY: Wind turbine to save another $480,000 over next 30 years Continued from 1A ing then-facilities manager Michael Cooper. Cooper was critical of the facility’s high energy bills, which at the time totaled more than $100,000 per year. - per’s plan was to commis- sion a study identifying ways they could improve watch, Tamastslikt slashed its electricity consumption by 63 percent and natural gas consumption by 76 per- cent over the next decade. “The mantra was reduce the use, and then renew,” Conner said. - ly improved, Tamastslikt turned its attention to inte- grating renewable energy and achieving net-zero con- sumption — meaning the to- tal amount of energy used by the building is equal to the amount of renewable energy generated on site. Cooper championed the wind turbine project before he died Feb. 12, 2014. The turbine began operating in March 2014 and was dedi- cated in May. It is expected to offset roughly 20 percent of the building’s energy demand and save another $480,000 over the next 30 years. The carport will only continue to slash Tamasts- likt’s energy consumption, Conner said. - er-driven Blue Sky program recently awarded a total of $1.8 million for solar proj- ects across Oregon. Since 2006, the program has vol- untarily funded work at more than 75 facilities pro- ducing 6.5 megawatts of clean energy. ——— Contact George Plaven at gplaven@eastoregonian. com or 541-564-4547. Thursday, January 22, 2015 HERMISTON: 114 teams will play more than 250 games around the city Continued from 1A Ken Gillet, who owns Ye Olde Pizza Shoppe with his wife Kim, said local restau- rants also experience a bump in business when there is a tournament in town. “There’s a very big im- pact,” he said. A team from Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, has already made reservations for dinner this weekend, he said, and so has a team from Irrigon. Gillet said he’s grateful to the school district for its role in bringing such big events to town. “If you get a little boost here and there, every little bit helps,” he said. Hermiston School District sometimes charges for the services of a custodian or oth- er cost outlays, but has devel- oped a policy of not charging facility rental fees to nonprof- it tournaments that include Hermiston students. District administrators say they see it as way to give back to the community by provid- ing incentive for groups to host tournaments — that way Hermiston athletes and their families don’t have to trav- el and local hotels, stores, restaurants and gas stations - tomers. Mike Kay, operations manager for Hermiston School District, said he and deputy superintendent Wade Smith are working with a consultant to put together a detailed report on the true economic impact of such events. He said he didn’t want to give away any numbers be- presented to the school board next month, but “when you see the impact, it’s pretty im- pressive.” He acknowledged Herm- iston’s increasing popularity as a destination for basketball tournaments, state football championships, OSAA dis- trict meets, wrestling tourna- ments and more. “It’s a pretty exciting time,” he said. This weekend the 114 basketball teams in the AAU tournament will play more than 250 games in school gyms around the city (plus - ing at 9 a.m. Saturday and extending through Sunday evening. Oregon jobless rate lowest since start of Great Recession - egon’s unemployment rate has dropped to a level not seen since the days before the economy plunged off a cliff into the Great Recession. The December unemploy- ment rate fell to 6.7 percent, the state Employment De- partment said Wednesday, a result of strong job gains in the last three months of 2014 and a slackening in the rush to rejoin the workforce. The last time the rate was as low was in August 2008. It had hovered at 7 per- cent for months as the state recorded job gains, encour- aging people who’d stopped looking for work during and after the recession to start putting in applications. But in December, the agency said, the labor force grew only slightly. The agency says job gains in December topped 8,000, and totaled about 24,000 for the last quarter of the year. December hiring was un- usually widespread in the various sectors of the econo- my, the agency said. Job gains were strong in government, rebounding af- ter a few years of cuts, and in construction, health care, transportation, warehous- ing, utilities, restaurants and lodging. Retail job gains were 2,000 higher than normal. “That means retailers hired more people than they usually do during the holiday season,” said a state econo- mist, Nick Beleiciks. 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