"How Tom Spent His Summer Vacation"
(a.k.a. The "Short" Version of the Story)

On Monday, July 12, 1999, Tom started feeling sick with what he thought was the flu: high fever, headache, etc. The week before he had a simple summer cold, so we didn't think too much of it. He had gone in to work on Monday, but when he started feeling so ill, he went to the doctor's office. They found he was running a fever of 104.5 and had a blood pressure over 150. (Normally his blood pressure is excellent -- around 118/70.) This should have been our first clue that this was something more than just the flu, but there were no other unusual symptoms. They sent him home with a diagnosis of the influenza.

On Tuesday morning he woke up with a burning pain in his right thigh just above the knee. He told me it felt like he'd "torn a muscle." I rolled my eyes and told him that you don't usually pull a muscle when you've just been lying on the couch... But, by evening he was feeling much worse. That night he never slept.

Very early Wednesday morning, in excruciating pain, he called the doctor. Thankfully Tom’s doctor is a personal friend and he kindly made a house call on his way into work around 7:30 am. The intensity of the pain suggested a possible blood clot, although his blood pressure was oddly LOW. It was quite puzzling, so the doctor sent us into the emergency room. Unfortunately, his strange and unclear symptoms made it take hours to diagnose the problem – when we first arrived he was already in the first stages of renal failure and his blood pressure was dropping dangerously low. He got sicker by the hour. It wasn't until after 5:00 that night that he was rushed into surgery which confirmed the then suspected diagnosis of "necrotizing fasciitis." or "flesh-eating disease." (For more information on this rare illness, visit http:/www.nnff.org.) The surgeon, along with our family doctor (and dear friend), came out of surgery to tell us that Tom was in critical condition and that the "odds were against him."  They told us he had less than a 5% chance of survival.

Over the next 36 hours things continued to go downhill… Even with massive doses of presser drugs, they could barely keep Tom’s blood pressure up to 90/50. The strep bacteria causing the infection continued to spread, producing horrible toxins that initiated multiple organ failure. By the next day Tom was not only on a ventilator, but was put on continuous dialysis and over a dozen IV drips. (He almost broke the ICU "record" with 13 separate IV pumps!) None of the surgeons or ICU specialists ever thought he would survive.

Meanwhile we did the only thing we could – PRAY! Within hours that first night there were dozens of people praying in the hospital chapel and in their homes. The next day, on Thursday, over 200 people met at our church at 3:00 in the afternoon to pray the rosary -– "coincidentally" Tom’s five o'clock surgery had been moved up to the exact same time because the infection was continuing to spread so aggressively. The doctors were amazed that Tom was still hanging on, but they still did not give us any more hope that Tom would be able to recover.

To make a long story short… Tom miraculously continued to hang on. He had four surgeries those first five days to remove more dead, infected tissue from his right leg (it spread from above his knee to above his hip, all the way down to his ankle). In a drug-induced coma, Tom thankfully wasn't aware of what was going on, but the rest of us were living a nightmare. He received seemly countless units of blood, antibiotics, and other drugs to keep him alive. He remained on a ventilator and continuous dialysis, and retained over 150 pounds of fluid those first few days due to the large volumes of fluid and high doses of presser drugs they used to keep him alive... but he pulled through! (The ICU doctors and nurses later told us that it was indeed a miracle -- they’d never before seen anyone that ill survive.)

Over the next few weeks Tom continued to amaze us all with his progress. The infection spread across most of his right leg, but only affected the fascia; no muscle tissue was lost. He was unconscious for about eight days, was completely immobile for almost two weeks, and didn’t have solid foods for four weeks. He had four debridement surgeries, three re-constructive (skin graft) surgeries, and carpal tunnel surgery (due to nerve damage that occurred during the early days of his ordeal). When he finally stood up (for 17 seconds), on August 13, it was incredibly painful because of the extended immobility. Over the course of the next four weeks, his body had to readjust to solid foods, adjust to the addition and withdrawal of various drugs, and learn to walk again. Finally on September 5th, just in time for my birthday, Tom returned home.

We are so thankful to God that Tom survived this deadly disease! It's been an amazing faith journey -- I can tell you most assuredly that even in the darkest days, we had faith that God was in control. Largely because of the great prayer support, I felt confident that even if Tom did not survive, God still was with us and He would help us deal with whatever the future held. It wasn't very typical or very logical, but the sense of peace was very real. We are so blessed to have had so many friends and strangers who held us up in prayer during this entire ordeal. Even Tom's return to health proved to be amazingly complete and "speedy."

As many of you know, Tom recovered so well and so quickly that he was able to ride in the annual MS150 bike tour less than a year after this whole ordeal began. (He'd participated in this event for the previous five or six years straight.) On the weekend of June 10, 2000, just nine months after returning home from the hospital, Tom rode over 200 miles in two days to raise money for multiple sclerosis.

The permanent affects have been minimal. Due to the massive presser drugs, Tom's fingers and toes suffer more from the cold than normal. Where the tissue was removed from his right leg, he gets strange and unpredictable skin sensations from the disrupted nerve endings, and his leg sometime is inexplicably "achy." And, with none of the normal padding, his shinbone is easily bruised and banged (the skin graft had to be placed directly over the bone with no layer of fascia or soft tissue)... But, after just a year, Tom no longer required any blood pressure, heart, or hormone supplements at all. The only medication he takes on a regular basis now are his vitamins and allergy shots. (Admittedly though, he does use a lot more Neosporin antibiotic cream on cuts and scraps than he ever did before!)

If you want more details on how Tom "spent his summer vacation," you’ll have to read the longer version of this story, Through the Valley of the Shadow of Death. By about Tom’s third or fourth day in the hospital, I began posting updates on the Internet to keep everyone informed in an attempt to avoid the spread of misinformation. Later, when Tom was home, I edited this web-page "journal", adding information and personal reflections, and had it "self-published" through iUniverse.com. The easiest way to get a copy is to order it through Barnes & Noble online (www.bn.com), although you can order it from anywhere, including Amazon.com, it just may take a few weeks as the books are printed in batches "on demand." We hope that sharing Tom's story will be an inspiration to others regarding the power of prayer and the importance of developing a deeper faith in God to prepare us for those inevitable difficult times that are a natural part of life.

Sola gloria a dios.

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(Page last updated on March 2, 2002.)