A high school senior from Columbus on his way to Disneyland for spring break suffered an aneurysm on the flight and is in a coma at a California hospital.
Miguel Windley, 18, underwent two open-heart surgeries, then contracted Stevens-Johnson Syndrome, a rare skin disorder which has left him blistered all over and blind.
"He's just burning inside out," his mother, Nanette Windley, said through tears in a phone interview from Stanford Hospital.
"He's in a coma. He hasn't been able to communicate with me. It's just so hard to come here every day and look at my son."
Doctors are trying to get Windley transferred to a burn unit, Nanette Windley said. She's staying near the hospital while her brother watches her three younger children in Columbus.
A former combat medic in the U.S. Army, the 42-year-old single mother said the trip was supposed to be a celebration for Miguel and two friends who just won a basketball tournament at their rec center. Miguel always wanted to see California, his mom said.
When Miguel suffered the aneurysm on March 21, the Delta plane made an emergency landing at an Air Force base in central California. He was later transferred to Stanford.
A woman who met Nanette Windley in the hospital, Crystal Finau, was moved by her plight.
"My father-in-law had open-heart surgery so we were in the intensive care unit too and she was just a mess, just beside herself," Finau said. "She's out of resources, living at the hospital basically next to her son. And there's a motel letting her stay there for free. It's the room where they hold the soap in."
Finau took Windley to a Bank of America and got a fund set up to help with expenses.
"She's retired military on a fixed income," Finau said. "She has zero resources."
Those wishing to donate can go to any Bank of America branch and give to The Miguel Windley Special Needs Trust.
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