In the weeks leading up to his daughter’s wedding, Weylin Robichaux had only one thing on his mind: making sure everything was ready for the big day.
Invitations were sent. The venue was booked. The band was lined up. His calendar was full, and his focus was fixed on walking his daughter down the aisle.
During that same time, his body was trying to get his attention.
Weylin had noticed his heart racing and feeling off for months, but he brushed it aside.
“I knew something was wrong with my heart. I could tell,” he says. “My heart was racing, but it was like a gradual period of time that it built up. So, I was just putting it off as old age and just kept going.”
He didn’t want to slow down, and he certainly didn’t want to risk missing his daughter’s wedding.
“One of the main reasons was I knew my daughter’s wedding was coming up,” Weylin recalls. “I didn’t tell nobody nothing because I said, let me make the wedding. I’ll tend to this after.”
Then one Sunday afternoon, his body forced the issue. He nearly passed out and went to lie down, something he never did during the day. His wife urged him to go to the emergency room, but he insisted he just needed rest. Three days later, she got him to a local doctor. His heart rate was 177 beats per minute, and he was in atrial fibrillation.
Within days, everything spiraled.
When Recovery Looked Unlikely
What began as a trip to a local hospital quickly became a life-or-death situation when Weylin’s heart rate plummeted to six beats per minute.
Specialists from another hospital were called in, but after evaluating him, they concluded that his chances of survival were extremely slim.
“The doctors packed up their stuff, left and said, ‘He’ll never make it,’” Weylin recalls.
His wife and children were left reeling. They had heard about a treatment called ECMO, but they didn’t know how to access it or where to go. Weylin’s condition continued to decline, and it seemed like no options were left.
Then an emergency room physician at the local hospital stepped in.
“He came into my room, he looked at me, and told my wife, ‘I can help you,’” Weylin remembers.
That doctor had a connection to the ECMO team at FMOL Health | Our Lady of the Lake Heart & Vascular Institute and immediately made the call.
“Within an hour and 20 minutes, they had flew me to the Lake,” Weylin says.
A Second Chance with ECMO
When Weylin arrived at Our Lady of the Lake, his condition was critical. He was placed on extracorporeal membrane oxygenation, or ECMO, a form of advanced life support that temporarily takes over the work of the heart and lungs.
ECMO allows blood to be pumped outside the body to a heart-lung machine, where it is oxygenated and returned, giving the heart and lungs time to rest and recover. For patients in severe heart failure or cardiogenic shock, it can be the bridge that makes survival possible.
“They showed me the machine and explained what I’d went through,” Weylin says. “It takes your heart, puts it at rest, and it does the work of the heart. The machine cycles the blood.”
For weeks, he was sedated and unaware of what was happening.
In addition to ECMO, Weylin required dialysis, a ventilator and a tracheostomy. He spent more than two months in the intensive care unit and nearly three months total in the hospital.
Slowly, his heart began to recover.
“By the grace of God, I walked out,” he says. “I went from a wheelchair to a walker to a cane, and now I’m walking back again. My heart’s back up to 50 percent, and everything looks like it’s going in the right direction.”
Family, Faith and a Team That Never Gave Up
Throughout his hospitalization and recovery, Weylin was never alone. His wife and children were at his side, advocating for him, asking questions and encouraging him through every setback and small victory.
“Oh, everything,” Weylin says when asked what their presence meant. “I wouldn’t have made it without them.”
As he became more alert, he also began to understand the depth of care he was receiving from the Heart & Vascular Institute team. When Weylin transitioned from intensive care to inpatient rehabilitation at Our Lady of the Lake, he and his family chose to stay with the same team that had already carried him so far.
He continues to return for follow-up visits with his cardiology and kidney teams, and he makes a point to stop by and see the clinicians who cared for him during his sickest days.
As his strength slowly returned, Weylin held on to one powerful motivator that kept him pushing forward.
Dancing at His Daughter’s Wedding
In the middle of his hospitalization, one thought cut through the fog of sedation and recovery. What about the wedding?
At the time, Weylin believed he had only been in the hospital for a weekend. In reality, it had already been weeks. His daughter’s wedding, originally scheduled for January 31, had been postponed. His family had quietly contacted the church, venue and band, and everyone had agreed to move the date to July 11.
As he worked through rehab, his daughter’s rescheduled wedding and his son’s wedding scheduled for late June became his goal.
“I said, I am not walking with a cane in my son’s wedding. I’m going to walk,” he recalls.
He did more than walk.
Two weeks after attending his son’s wedding without a cane, Weylin escorted his youngest daughter down the aisle. Then he danced with her at her reception, exactly as he had hoped months earlier.
Weylin continues to regain strength and rebuild his life. He still attends regular doctor appointments at Our Lady of the Lake, and each visit reminds him how close he came to losing everything.
“There’s not a night I don’t go to bed that I don’t think about the hospital,” he says. “It’s always on my mind. But I came out. It turned out for the best.”
