By Scott Reddoch
The baby giraffe was again making trouble. It enjoyed knocking over trash cans and pushing things off of tables and onto the floor. There was a marching band assembling near the elevators on the big hallway.
I was glad that the practice had not started. “It is all bad news,” he said. “Me and the other doctors give him a 10 % chance of surviving the next four months.” I wasn’t supposed to hear that conversation, and wouldn’t have if the band began to play.
I was hoping that someone would dim the lights. I thought that they better stop talking about me and make some room. Giraffes need a lot of space to hide, and the loud noise coming from band practice scares the baby.
Before I get any further, let’s look at a brief history of me. I am the oldest of two children born into a strong, working class family. I was born in a small South Louisiana town, at a hospital that is literally located on a bayou. My childhood was pretty good, full of wonder and limitless possibility. Things were so simple, I remember the large supply of lizards and dragonflies that would entertain me for hours. At the age of eight, my father took a job in New Orleans, and we moved away from the sleepy place that we knew as home.
Life in the city was different from the life I left in the small town. I had never seen a panhandler before, and the housing projects that I saw, are infamous for drugs and violence, all new concepts for little me. My father worked two jobs and my mom had one, they had to do that to pay the bills. We didn’t have extra, but we had enough, and I am grateful for the sacrifices they made. I did well in school, thanks to the robust work ethic I learned, and slightly better than average intelligence.
Ready to spread my wings, I found myself in a Marine Corps boot camp 10 days after high school graduation. I did learn a lot from the Marines. Although I learned a lot about early adulthood, I still had the thought of travel and adventure stirring in my young head. Early adulthood is somewhat a blur, but full of bad decisions and a total waste of money. I certainly know hard knocks, it is the only way that I would listen. Driven by wanderlust, I abandoned early college, and chased the meaning of it all. I guess that I found meaning, but didn’t understand what any of it meant.
Slowly, I began to settle down. I was taught that if I found a job I could tolerate, that I should stick with it. My career sort of made itself, as I was just going for the ride, not planning any aspect of the journey. I bounced around a bit, but did stay in the same field, which was of great benefit. I did find a few good places to work with. I stuck around them, one year became two, and now I look back at a 23 year career in civil engineering and construction. I guess that time passes regardless of what you do with it. After 21 years in the business, I branched out on my own. At around 18 months I finally started making a profit, I began looking at ways to improve the operation.
I began having dizzy spells that worsened to the point where I went to the hospital. I was diagnosed with high blood pressure and given a prescription. I went on nearly a sodium free diet and followed up, and had blood work done as requested. I never made the appointment to review the test results.
Instead, I was in a hospital, on a ventilator, fighting for my life. I had suffered two strokes to my brainstem. The first stroke put me in the hospital, with the second stroke occurring about 18 hours later. The second stroke nearly killed me, it happened while I was in the hospital, and I underwent emergency surgery to ensure that blood was flowing to my brain. This was the beginning of a long, treacherous journey. The strokes that I had are rare, making one percent of cases worldwide. Additionally, I was diagnosed with locked in syndrome, meaning I’m unable to speak, eat, move, or communicate.
Improper cleaning led to the development of a serious pressure sore. I had a respiratory trainee make a huge mistake, that caused me to “gully breath ” and choke on my saliva and blood. When I started to gully breath, I was sent away to a hospital one and a half hours away, this was my abrupt introduction to profit driven health care.
Nothing screams patient care like riding in the back of an ambulance, while being tossed around by hospitals for liability mitigation. The giraffe somehow found a ride to hospital three, it wouldn’t go to hospital two. I won’t be naming places, be sure to keep your eyes open at all times, there are some good hospitals, and some bad ones too.
You are already aware of hospital one, that is where I had the second stroke, and was given a pressure sore and a bleeding throat. I was transferred to hospital two, and luckily they couldn’t stop my bleeding, which was good cause I probably would not have lived much longer there.
It smelled like death. The entire staff wore Halloween masks, that must have really been stuffy because my air conditioning didn’t work. I was transferred again, hospital three. Hospital three was good, they stopped the bleeding and cared about me, but the administration didn’t like my insurance, so I had to go. My mother asked that I wouldn’t be transferred back to hospital two. I once again was moving, hospital four. I met a good staff at hospital four, they got me off the ventilator, and sat me up in a wheelchair.
At hospital four, doctors discovered that I could make noises, and have intelligent communication. When that discovery was made, I became a candidate for rehabilitation. There was a different marching band who would practice there. They were a lot louder than the band at hospital one. I was moving again for the fifth time. I am glad for this one. I had been accepted into a popular rehabilitation program that has won awards, and was my best chance for survival and some sort of life after my stay.
Upon arrival, I could see a big difference in care. The nurse that admitted me would get at eye level when speaking to me, that made me feel like this place had people who would care about me. Hospital five was shaping up to be the light at the end of this tunnel. To my amazement, every person that cared for me was friendly, and encouraging. Remember, this is a rehabilitation program, and the therapists were designing tasks for me that would challenge me to push further than I ever had.
At a facility with staff that truly cared about me, I started making big improvement. The therapists delivered a tough schedule, but despite my limitations, I happily participated in everything that they threw my way. I was making improvements, but the pressure sore that I was allowed to develop, was trying to take my life. The sore was really bad. If you were ever to search for a bad pressure sore, you would see what I was dealing with. Two specialists started working to heal me. My sore was cavernous and had exposed bone.
The sore was a major source of infection and was “possibly” the cause of a very stubborn case of sepsis that also sought to kill me. I began to slowly beat the sepsis, then I started with a strong bout of pneumonia. I was convinced that this was my end. Through the vivid hallucinations, I had a moment of clarity, when I told my mother “I may die.” I was taken to an intensive care unit, and don’t know what was reality and what was hallucinations.
After what I believe was 10 days, I went back to the rehabilitation unit. I was welcomed back by the entire staff. I lost some ground, but was excited to be back working on myself. Again, the program proved to be a welcomed challenge. The Therapists were pushing me to grab what ground I had lost, and begin improving abilities. I am grateful for their support during a very trying time.
I found the doctors, nurses, techs, and therapists, to be supportive and quick to respond to needs. I enjoyed working with the staff there and some are lifetime friends to me. After spending about 7 months at various hospitals, I was finally being released.
My release was conditional, and I had the choice of a nearby nursing facility, or move away and into my parents’ home. I lost a lot, and I was coming to grips with all the loss. I lost friends, my business, my house, my dog, I didn’t lose my girlfriend, because she sees something in me, I’m glad she does. She wanted me to have the best care, that required me to move away.
I’m not much of a crier, but I cried really hard when I had to leave that behind. “Welcome to the upside down” I thought to myself, this was going to be an interesting ride.
There is an unbearable amount of mental anguish with paralysis, enormous defeat is something that I contend with on a near constant basis. If I were to function with what I had left, I needed some help. I began getting audio books on defeat and how to succeed after setbacks. I studied what similarity everyone had in common, for the focus of my coping strategy. I also watched how others responded to stress, and incorporated that into my overall plan.
I started using the coping skills that I had discovered that others found worked for them. I wanted to hone my coping skills. I thought that coping with stress was the first step in transforming from a burden to a benefit to those around me. I had a lot of work to do.
I continued to strive to be the best version of myself, wanting to present that to the world. I was once asked a simple but powerful question “if you had 10 years to live, what would you do?” Then he asked “If you had 10 days to live, what would you do?” I guess that is technically two questions, but doesn’t change the potency.
Many people never find the purpose of their lives. I am lucky in the sense that I was clearly shown the purpose of my life, and I am working to fulfill that. In order to provide the purpose I’ve seen, I know that I have to work much harder than a non paralyzed person. I have to work harder than I ever have in my life, I created a system that helps me cope with paralysis, and do some good work too.
I still have bad days, and many times, my plans don’t work. I am not much different from you in many ways. I just have a system to deal with the ups and downs. I don’t have the answers. I am happy to be alive, and to fulfill my purpose.
