’Minute at a time.’ Tri-Cities chef with COVID is fighting to live. His thoughts are for others

Jessie Ayala has made himself a popular chef.

While he trained in Seattle and used his culinary skills throughout the city, bringing his food to his hometown of Prosser is what drew him back to the east side.

The 50-year-old owner of the Ciao Wagon first started working in his aunt’s bed and breakfast in Prosser when only a handful of wineries were in town. He even was voted Lower Valley’s Favorite Chef.

Then, he and his wife Susanne opened the rustic Italian bistro Tuscany Downtown for a few years before moving back to Seattle in the early 2000s.

But it wasn’t long before they missed the feel of the Valley and opened the Ciao Wagon in 2016 as a mobile bistro serving the Prosser area.

“We were driving every weekend between Seattle to Prosser,” Susanne Ayala recalled.

They returned to Tri-Cities the following year, when she got a job as a human resources manager for Americold. Jessie took the job as head chef Barnard Griffin’s The Kitchen.

For a while, he still ran the Ciao Wagon at the same time as working at Barnard Griffin, but eventually turned his full focus on his own business.

“Last year was a record year and we were set to double our sales,” said his wife of 26 years.

Then COVID-19 pandemic hit in the spring.

“I can tell you from a biz standpoint, COVID has really had rough negative impact,” she said.

And now it’s taking an even greater toll on their family.

Jessie Ayala is in Portland hospital with critical COVID complications.

Getting sick

The father of four grown children and his wife visited one of their sons and other family on the East Coast in September.

“After we returned, we learned a family member had tested positive for COVID, so we quarantined,” Susanne Ayala told the Tri-City Herald.

Both she and Jessie became ill, along with their 19-year-old daughter. Susanne Ayala said they didn’t get tested because they knew what it was and stayed at home.

But Jessie Ayala wasn’t getting better.

“One morning, he was downstairs and I heard coughing,” Susanne Ayala said. “It was not a cough I ever heard before. He couldn’t catch breath in between. I told him, ‘I think you need to go to hospital.’ “

Their son and his fiance, who are EMTs in the Tri-Cities, came to help while Susanne called a doctor. The doctor told her to call an ambulance immediately.

That was Oct. 7.

Now, almost a month later, Jessie Ayala remains hospitalized on life support at Legacy Emmanuel Medical Center in Portland. He is on a ventilator and was placed on a bypass device that replaces the function of his heart and lungs.

The ECMO machine — extracorporeal membrane oxygenation — pumps blood out of the body, oxygenates it and returns it to the patient’s body.

“This is going it to go on for a long time and is going to be very expensive,” Susanne Ayala said.

The Federal Food and Drug Administration relaxed the use of ECMO devices in April for COVID-19 patients for the duration of the pandemic. But the Ayala’s insurance may not cover it because it is considered experimental, Susanne Ayala said.

A Facebook fundraiser was created to help with their medical, hotel and other costs. Jessie was expected to finally be able to have visitors starting this weekend.

On Sunday morning, she was thankful and posted about some progress. “He is awake and coherent and understands I will be with him today. The team said he has such a good attitude, will to live and is the best ECMO patient they have. If anyone is going to make its going to be him. Praise God!”

But she admitted to the Herald that she’s cautious.

“Honestly, I’m taking it a day at time, a minute at time,” she said, adding that her faith in God has given her the strength to get through each day.

“I have faith that whatever end result will be I will be fine,” she said.

Treatment

On Oct. 7, the ambulance took Jessie Ayala to Lourdes Medical Center in Pasco, then later he was taken to Trios Health in Kennewick because there weren’t enough nurses to care for all the patients, Susanne Ayala said.

He spent the next two weeks at Trios when Susanne Ayala got a call from his doctor Oct. 20.

“I was at work in Hermiston when I got a call they were going to be putting him on life support,” said Susanne. “He was not doing well — he couldn’t sustain himself.”

His doctor told her that her husband needed care beyond what could be offered in Tri-Cities. The doctor ordered a transfer to Portland before his conditioned worsened.

“It was probably the hardest day of my life,” she said in a Facebook video giving an update on her husband’s condition.

Susanne Ayala was able to see her husband in his room for the first time since he was admitted.

“We really didn’t get to feel or touch because I was all geared up,” she said describing what was much like a Hazmat suit that she had to wear.

She got to sit with him for 1 1/2 hours, talking with him and praying together before he was administered anesthesia and transported to Portland.

“This man to the end was so concerned for other people about what they are feeling and how it is effecting them,” she said.

As a Christian and spiritual leader with their church, Tri-Cities Christian Church, one of the things he told his wife was that he wanted to be certain the men he had been leading in a Bible study remained connected to one another.

Some who have worked with him describe him as an inspiration to other fathers and clearly a dedicated family man.

When Jessie comes out of isolation this weekend, he will be able to have a single visitor a day — and it must be the same person. She will be unable to stay with him in his hospital room and must stay at a hotel — adding to the mounting costs.

Future of business

The Ciao Wagon is temporarily closed. They were running it with the help of their children and friends — but for her own mental health, the business is on pause during her husband’s hospitalization.

But she emphasized the family venture will be operating and honoring commitments as soon as they can.

For now, she is focusing on family — being grateful for her children who have ensured she hasn’t been at home alone and being thankful for the support of loved ones and Tri-Cities Christian Church and leaning heavily on her faith.

“For me, that is just really the heart of it,” Susanne said. “Regardless of what happens on the other side, God has a reason and purpose for everything.”

This story was originally published November 1, 2020 at 2:23 PM.