Al and Lindsey Nelson’s world changed forever on Feb. 20, when their 3-year-old son, Lyle, was airlifted to Nicklaus Children’s Hospital in Miami, where doctors diagnosed necrotizing pneumonia.
“I flew up with Lyle on a Thursday while Al stayed home with Gabe, our 5-year-old,” Lindsey Nelson, a registered nurse, recalled on April 21. “By Sunday, I was on the phone telling Al to get to Miami immediately. We didn’t know if our son would make it through the night.”
In Miami, tests revealed that the tiny towhead had been infected by four different childhood viruses, leading to the pneumonia that severely weakened one of his lungs, which will take 6 months to a year to heal.
During his three weeks in the pediatric ICU, Lyle endured countless tests, a G/I bleed, a pneumothorax, a chest tube, respiratory distress, tachycardia and countless other medical milestones and setbacks.
“He is such a rock star,” Lindsey Nelson recalled this week via Skype, while Lyle and Gabe played at home. “It still doesn’t feel real to me that we nearly lost him. In those three weeks, I spent a total of six hours outside Lyle’s hospital room.”
Additional genetic testing and a host of appointments with specialists have been scheduled to find the root of Lyle’s autoimmune issues.
“He’s got a chink in his armor,” said Al Nelson, a longtime bartender and social media coordinator for Sunset Pier at Ocean Key Resort. “He’s basically operating with one lung until the other one heals, so if he gets sick with anything, but God forbid, coronavirus, it would be life-threatening. Catastrophic.”
The Nelsons are eager to find out why Lyle’s immune system couldn’t fight off those four viruses. But all those follow-up appointments with specialists and geneticists had to be postponed, because while their world had seemed to stop while the family held its collective breath for three weeks of worry, the rest of the world had changed significantly.
The Nelsons would bring Lyle home on March 11 to a different and ever-changing world, one filled with masks, clean hands, gallons of sanitizer, a padlock on their front gate to keep out delivery people, online schooling and exclusively indoor activities.
“My kids have the cleanest hands in town,” Lindsey Nelson told The Weekly on April 21. “Every time they touch something that’s been outside, they automatically turn to me and hold up their hands for Purell.”
By the time they reached Key West for Lyle’s homecoming on March 11, “it had forced us overnight to make some serious, quick and critical decisions,” Al Nelson said. “My mom had flown in from Illinois to stay with Gabe, and we had to tell her, she can stay here with us, or she could go stay with my sister and her family in New Town, but she couldn’t go back and forth. No way,” he said. “We basically had to create a bubble to keep Lyle safe.”
Lindsey Nelson took leave from her nursing job at Lower Keys Medical Center to care for Lyle, and Al Nelson’s bar has been closed for weeks.
“But we’re all home and together, and that’s all that matters,” Al Nelson said while his two sons jumped on the couch behind him. “We’re still paying Lyle’s day care center to hold his spot, but he won’t be attending for the next several months. We’re figuring out which friends’ houses where we can shower before returning home once we go back to work. But until then, we’re trying to maintain as much of a routine as possible: getting up, getting dressed in ‘school clothes’ and doing our online lessons with both boys.”
Lindsey Nelson also reminded people that they never know what’s happening with a family behind closed doors, and urged sensitivity — without judgment or opinions.
“It’s beyond insulting to see people not taking this seriously,” she said. “My son could die because someone refuses to be inconvenienced by a mask. I’m not asking them to do anything the government isn’t already requiring — aside from keeping their opinions to themselves. You never know what people are dealing with.”
A lump formed in Al Nelsons’ throat as he tried to express their gratitude for the Key West community and people all over the country.
“We’ve been on so many church prayer lists. Multiple friends offered to watch Gabe while we were in the hospital (luckily my Mom came to town). My high school friends sent N-95 masks, sanitizer and wipes. People made us masks. Locals grocery- shopped for us multiple times, dropping off uncooked food we can heat to temperature and care packages of Lysol and gloves.
“Our pharmacist, Megan, picked up a paper prescription and dropped off Lyle’s medication. People sent the kids workbooks and things to keep them busy. An extraordinary Go Fund Me page provided financial assistance. It’s been truly humbling and reminds me that we don’t walk alone in this world.”
