OMAHA – It’s something Amy Crosby says she wouldn't wish her worst enemy.
Amy, whose maiden name is Ringeisen, is from Truman. She’s married to 2009 Martin County West graduate Blake Crosby. They have a one-year-old son, Crue, who has Down syndrome.
As Amy drove from South Dakota to Children's Hospital Omaha last month, she wondered if she'd be driving back without Crue.
"They just said, ‘you know, he's very ill, Amy, we will do the best we can to make him come home with you,’" Crosby told KETV-TV of Omaha.
Crue had tested positive for COVID-19. Amy and Blake were shocked when they heard the news, because they had taken extreme precautions since their son’s birth.
"I just fell and I just sobbed," said Crosby, a nurse, who was in Omaha while Blake, a teacher and wrestling coach at Lennox High School, is back home. "I just didn't know what our future was going to hold."
She quickly learned it would be a future filled with tubes, wires, and a lot of questions.
"What's best, what's not best? Are we doing everything that we can? Did we do everything that we can? How did we catch it?” Amy said. Blake and Amy are vaccinated.
Crue's history of open-heart surgery and a rare immune disease made contracting COVID-19 much more scary.
"We got a nasty taste of it and it was awful,” Amy said. “I wouldn't wish this on my worst enemy."
Crue needed highly specialized care, which is why they went to Omaha.
But for a little while, they weren't sure if the journey had been worthwhile. "They had a bed but they didn't have a nurse," Amy said.
A nurse stepped up to take an extra shift. However, in the month Crue was intubated, ICU beds for children have become harder and harder to come by.
Dr. Sharon Stoolman, a pediatrician at Children's Hospital, said last year Children's had one or two kids a week with COVID-19. Last weekr, there were 18 kids in their hospital with the virus. "I think we're in the eye of the storm," Stoolman said.
For Crue's loyal crew, that storm is finally subsiding. He was taken off the ventilator this week, after a very long month.
"What exactly happened was my nightmare, my worst dream that I thought could ever happen," Amy said.
There's a long road to recovery ahead.
"Any time that you're in the bed for one day, it's about seven days to recover that strength," Stoolman said.
But Amy is just grateful to travel that road with Crue in the back seat.
"I just want to grab him and snuggle him and kiss him and just tell him how proud I am of him which I tell him all the time," she said.