Adam Geller, national writer, New York, joined by video journalist Teresa Crawford and photographer Charlie Arbogast, both based in Chicago, produced a powerful and intimate narrative of one nurse’s precarious fight to survive COVID-19 — including the double lung transplant that saved her life.
Kari Wegg shows the “clamshell” scar on her chest at her home in Westfield, Ind., March 24, 2021, just a few months after undergoing a double lung transplant. Wegg worries about how long her new lungs will last, despite reassurances from doctors.
AP Photo / Charles Rex Arbogast
Rodney Wegg’s eye tears up as he listens to his wife Kari talk about her COVID-19 ordeal that resulted in a double lung transplant, dat the family’s Westfield, Ind., home, March 21, 2021. “I feel like I’m trapped in a Lifetime movie,” he posted to co-workers, friends and relatives following Kari’s case. “So much information, so many paths to take, so many decisions to make not knowing where they’ll lead.” And the most painful decision, one doctor warned in an August call, was days away: whether to disconnect Kari from the machine keeping her alive.
AP Photo / Charles Rex Arbogast
Kari Wegg, right, reaches out for a hug from her oldest son, Gavin, as he leaves for school from their home in Westfield, Ind., March 23, 2021.
AP Photo / Charles Rex Arbogast
Double lung transplant recipient Kari Wegg kisses her dachshund, Maisie, at her home in Westfield, Ind., March 22, 2021. The Indiana nurse came down with COVID-19 in the summer of 2020; her condition spiraled downward, and her life was saved only by grace of the transplant.
AP Photo / Charles Rex Arbogast
Kari Wegg is reflected in a glass door as she looks outside her home in Westfield, Ind., March 22, 2021.
AP Photo / Charles Rex Arbogast
Geller had wanted to find a health care worker recovering after being incapacitated by COVID. He started out calling hospitals with lung transplant and COVID long-hauler programs in New York, Chicago, Florida, Texas and California. Only a handful had done lung transplants on COVID patients — even fewer on health care workers — and most did not end up putting him in touch with patients. But Chicago’s Northwestern Memorial Hospital, which had performed the first and, by far, the most COVID lung transplants, put him in touch with nurse Kari Wegg, who at one point before her transplant had been in a coma with little chance of recovery.
Wegg got winded during their first phone conversation, a couple of weeks after she returned home, but she and her husband were open to telling their story. The AP trio spent large parts of four days in the family’s Indiana home. The result was a riveting read with compelling visuals by Arbogast and Crawford, whose video was edited by multiformat journalist Allen Breed. The package won terrific online play, including the Chicago Tribune and Indiana news sites, with remarkably high reader engagement.