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Elliot Landry’s COVID-19 Hospitalization (2021–2022 School Year)

Elliot Landry’s COVID-19 hospitalization was a catastrophic medical event during his 2021–2022 senior year of high school. His pituitary gigantism affected his cardiovascular, respiratory, metabolic, and mobility reserve without making him broadly immunocompromised. The illness required prolonged intensive care and left additional respiratory and cardiovascular damage.

The Crisis

Elliot contracted COVID-19 during the school year in which he turned eighteen and deteriorated rapidly. He initially presented with fever, cough, and body aches, but his oxygen saturation dropped and his breathing became increasingly labored.

Jazmine, Melinda Fields, and the Jones family recognized the severity and helped transport him from the Montgomery area to the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) Medical Center, where his complex adolescent and size-related needs could be supported. Supplemental oxygen proved insufficient, and he required intubation and mechanical ventilation.

Intubation and ICU

At approximately six feet eight inches and 365 pounds, Elliot required equipment, positioning, vascular access, airway planning, pressure relief, and medication decisions adapted to his body. Adult-sized equipment did not remove the need for age-appropriate communication and care for an adolescent patient. Jazmine remained beside him through the intubation decision while the team explained the immediate risk and the need for ventilatory support.

Elliot was deeply sedated while mechanically ventilated. The intensive-care team monitored his heart rate, oxygen saturation, blood pressure, respiratory status, positioning, skin integrity, and other complications of critical illness and prolonged immobility.

DVT Complication

Days into his ICU stay, while still intubated and sedated, Elliot developed a deep-vein thrombosis in his leg. Severe COVID-19, critical illness, inflammation, vascular injury, and prolonged immobility can all contribute to thrombosis. The clot created a risk of pulmonary embolism without determining an inevitable outcome.

The medical team initiated anticoagulation therapy and continued close monitoring while treating the underlying critical illness.

Community Response

Melinda’s GoFundMe

Melinda Fields created and managed a GoFundMe campaign for Elliot’s medical expenses and ongoing care needs. She used campaign updates to describe his medical complications and ask the community for prayers, shares, donations, and practical support.

The campaign enabled Jazmine to remain near the hospital while Elliot was in intensive care and sought help with temporary lodging, transportation, medical expenses, and basic needs while she was away from work. In an update describing Elliot’s intubation and dangerous blood clot, Melinda wrote:

“Every dollar helps. Every share helps. Every moment you pause and think of Elliot? Helps more than you know. We love him fiercely. And we’re going to keep fighting with him. Please join us.”

The update was shared hundreds of times.

Comments poured in from people sharing memories of his kindness: * “Elliot helped my grandma every week at J&R Foods. This is the least I can do.” * “Praying for complete healing. This young man has a heart of gold.” * “My kids ask about the nice man with stickers every time we go shopping. Please get better, Elliot.”

People on fixed incomes donated five dollars; local businesses contributed a hundred. Every donation came with stories of how Elliot had touched their lives.

Miles’s Flyer Campaign

While Elliot was unconscious and critically ill, his best friend Miles Jones created hand-drawn flyers asking the community to send cards, letters, and well-wishes to Elliot at the hospital. The flyers included Elliot’s name, the hospital address, and a simple plea: “He needs to know he’s not alone. Please send him hope.”

Miles put the flyers up everywhere—taped to grocery store windows, pinned to community center bulletin boards, attached to telephone poles, distributed at church services. His handwriting was shaky with emotion, some letters uneven from tears, but the message was clear: “This is my brother, and I need your help to bring him home.”

The response was overwhelming. Hundreds of cards and letters arrived at the hospital addressed to Elliot Landry—get-well cards from children he had given stickers to at J&R Foods, letters from elderly customers he had helped carry groceries, notes from coworkers sharing favorite memories, prayers written out in careful handwriting from church community members, and drawings from local schoolchildren who had heard his story.

The ICU nurses displayed the cards throughout Elliot’s room. During periods when sedation was lightened to assess neurological function, nurses read them aloud to him.

Waking Up

After weeks of critical illness, Elliot’s lungs recovered enough for the medical team to begin weaning him from mechanical ventilation. The process included spontaneous-breathing assessment, close monitoring, and preparation to resume support if he could not sustain breathing safely.

Elliot passed the spontaneous breathing trial, and the endotracheal tube was removed. His throat remained raw after weeks of intubation, his voice was hoarse and painful, and his breathing remained labored.

When he woke fully, he was confused and frightened. He did not remember where he was or what had happened. He saw the tangle of tubes and monitors still connected to his body, the cards covering every surface, his mother’s tear-stained face beside his bed. His first word was barely a whisper through damaged vocal cords: “Mama?”

Jazmine held his hand and told him, “You’re okay, baby. You’re okay. You’re here. You’re safe.”

Elliot’s speech was slurred and halting because of intubation trauma, prolonged sedation, severe illness, and his baseline speech differences. He asked for permission to sleep and repeatedly asked to go home while he remained confused about the hospitalization.

Miles visited when allowed and told Elliot about the flyers, hundreds of cards, and community response. Elliot cried and thanked him. Miles held his hand and said, “I knew you’d come back. I knew it.”

Recovery

Post-intensive-care effects included cognitive and physical regression, agitation, difficulty regulating emotion, and the return of self-injurious behavior during frustration or overwhelm.

Weeks of immobilization caused severe deconditioning and muscle loss while increasing Elliot’s existing joint pain. His rehabilitation included physical therapy for strength and mobility, occupational therapy for daily tasks, and speech therapy after prolonged intubation.

Jazmine and Melinda advocated for his rehabilitation and navigated the related insurance and care-coordination barriers.

Elliot completed high school with a regular diploma in 2022 after the illness and rehabilitation disrupted his senior year.

Lasting Effects

The hospitalization left lasting respiratory and cardiovascular damage and further reduced Elliot’s physical reserve. It also added intensive-care trauma to his earlier medical experiences while preserving his gratitude toward the staff members who treated and supported him.

Elliot carried intensive-care trauma into later medical crises and procedures. The cards, fundraising, and family presence also remained part of how he remembered the hospitalization and the community that supported him.

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