January 10th was just like any other Sunday. We returned from celebrating Christmas with my family in Pennsylvania, and headed to bed, looking forward to a Monday off from work. Monday came, and I started to feel as though I had caught a touch of the flu. I remember having dinner with my wife that night. Because my stomach wasn't feeling well, I thought that a nice turkey sandwich from Panera would hit the spot.
Things are a bit fuzzy until bedtime, when I started to shiver uncontrollably. We piled the blankets on as I tried desperately to get warm, but nothing seemed to be working. It was then that I remembered we had a fan with a heating element in the bathroom, so I went into the bathroom and turned the heating fan on. I then asked Emily to get me some hot tea. As I sat getting warm, drinking hot tea and bottled water, it occurred to me that perhaps I was dehydrated, since the symptoms seemed to fit. So I continued to take in fluids like mad, something that, in retrospect, was probably a bad idea. I don't remember a lot after this.
I have vague memories of waking up the next morning, and telling Emily that I had called my boss at work to tell him that I wouldn't be in (although I hadn't). I don't remember the following events, but Emily and my parents have related bits and pieces to me. Apparently, the next few hours consisted of me traveling between the bathroom and the bedroom, all the while telling Emily that I was okay. Emily had since asked her parents (who live here in Dubuque) to come over because she was worried about how I was acting, telling my wife at one point, apparently, that I had a tumor. All I can think of when I hear this is Arnold Schwarzenegger in "Kindergarten Cop" telling the children "it's not a tumor!" As I slipped further into delirium, my father-in-law called my parents (who live about 90 minutes away) and asked them to come down. Soon after they arrived, I was to the point where I was talking incoherently. At that point, my father made the decision to call 911.
Apparently it was quite the scene outside of our house in our quiet little subdivision. For, when you make a 911 call, regardless of the emergency, you will receive the following emergency vehicles: a police cruiser, a fire rescue truck, and an ambulance. I'm a big guy, and I was bigger when this happened, so it took quite a few of the responders to get me on the gurney and out to the ambulance. I have what I can only imagine is a false memory of being dropped before reaching the ambulance. The next memory is being slid into the ambulance. I then have a brief memory of the ambulance garage at Mercy Hospital, as they took me out of the ambulance and rushed me to the emergency room. Jump to one of the examination rooms in the ER, and my memory of trying to get up off of the examination table, telling people that "I have to leave." Emily said that I was very out of it at this point, and not making a lot of sense at all.
At this point, my memories stop. The rest is from accounts from friends and family. I was taken to surgery so that they could determine why my body's systems were failing. The surgeon told my family that I had a 10 percent chance of surviving the surgery, but a 1 percent chance of surviving without the surgery. Quite possibly the hardest thing that my wife had to do at that time was to sign the consent form giving the doctors permission to perform surgery, a surgery that I may not return from. The staff then began to wheel me down to the operating room. As they pulled me into the waiting elevator, one of the wheels took a bad turn and became lodged between the elevator and the main floor. Unfortunately, all of the staff members helping were at that point in the elevator, behind the bed. My father-in-law, in a moment of fast thinking and super-human strength, lifted the bed by himself and got it into the elevator.
I came out of surgery with three deep wounds in my right leg, where the surgeon had removed skin in an attempt to determine what had happened. By this time, the only system in my body that hadn't shut down was my circulatory system, and as it was, my blood pressure was not high enough to register on the equipment. I had a fever somewhere over 105 F. And I was out cold. The doctors basically told my family that all we could do was wait at this point and hope that the fluids and antibiotics would do their job.
To be continued (of course)...
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