Johnny McKeever Donations

I want to take a moment to say a very heartfelt thank you, to this wonderful community. 

On June 6th my wife had to take my 17 year old son Johnny to the Showlow Emergency Room with some what we thought was possibly just dehydration issues, once there they ran some tests, did a MRI, ultrasounds and told her, he had Gallstones and needed his Gallbladder removed, and needed to be transported to Phoenix Children’s Hospital by Air for the surgery, so me not trusting just anyone with him made a call to a friend and arranged for Johnny to be taken by Native Air 7 out of Payson. So they flew him down and we arrived the doctors at Phoenix Children’s Hospital told us he did not have any gallstones and did not need surgery, but we’re concerned because his liver enzymes were through the roof and they didn’t know why. So he was admitted and over the next week his condition worsened and they could not tell us why, other than his liver, right kidney, and a few other things were enflamed, they ended up doing a liver biopsy that came back inconclusive and still couldn’t tell us what was wrong other than his antibodies were attacking his liver for unknown reasons, the first thought was a side effect of his seizure medications but because his liver was so enflamed they could tell if that was the cause. So they have started treating him for what’s known as Immune dyssregulation. Which is not a common thing. The basics of it is a person can have a small infection and the antibodies go haywire and instead of attacking the infection they attack other parts of the body and in Johnnys case the liver. In normal situations they treat it with very high doses of prednisone which they attempted with Johnny but discovered it didn’t work so they had to figure out that his T cells were the ones still attacking the liver so they had to kill off the T Cells to stop them from doing more damage. The easiest way to explain the damage is the use INR level in the liver 1 being a perfect healthy liver and 2 is a complete liver failure he’s been sitting between 1.5 and 1.8 for the last two weeks, they started him on a second treatment the end of last week and we are starting to see some improvements.  We still don’t have an exact cause yet but they are working hard to figure it out. We know this is going to be a long road to a full recovery, and has taken a toll on johnny both physically and mentally. 

My wife and I have been at the hospital with him since june 6th, during that time I’ve had people messaging me, calling, texting all sending their thoughts and prayers. Last night I decided I needed to come home for a night to spend a few hours with my youngest daughter Scarlett Who I’m sure misses mom , dad and her big brother. This morning I went down and talk to my sister at the the restaurant and she informed me that a couple of gentlemen who I’m truly blessed to call friends had started a  raffle to help my family and I during this speed bump in life, and FLOA was also taking donations, anddonation jars had been set up ,  I’m not going to lie it brought tears to my eyes knowing that the people in the community came together to help us. I wish I could personally shake hands or give a hug to everyone that donated to Scooter Bennette know we truly appreciate the kindness and love that this community has shown us. I could not ask for a better community to serve.  Again thank you, Scooter Bennett, and Denny, and all the board members of FLOA thank you all for the efforts to but this together it means the world. 

We are praying that come August when school starts again we can return to friday night lights to watch #72 play his senior year of football with his team mates.