HONOLULU (KHNL/Gray News) – A family’s dream vacation to Hawaii turned into a three-month nightmare after a medical emergency left them stuck on the island.
Ellen Ennis Smith, her husband, PJ Smith, and her adult son, Geoffrey, arrived in Hawaii from North Carolina on April 9, excited for what they called the “trip of a lifetime.” The vacation started off with wonderful memories, but months later, the family is making tearful visits to the hospital and eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and soup in a hotel room, KHNL reports.
Ten days into the family’s trip, PJ Smith was hospitalized for a severe fungal lung infection and put in a medically induced coma. He went into kidney failure and needed dialysis. He also caught pneumonia and had to be intubated.
“I can probably count on one hand how many nights I’ve slept through the night in this last three months. I just can’t sleep,” Ellen Smith said. “There have been many nights where I thought he [PJ Smith] was going to die in Hawaii. The doctors thought he was going to die in Hawaii.”…