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| Doug |
My name is Doug and I am a 51-year-old man. I had been ill with a sinus condition for several days prior to my lapse into the oblivion of viral encephalitis; the unanimous diagnosis reached by the several doctors attending me at North Memorial Hospital in Robbinsdale, Minnesota. The last thing I remember was cooking and serving a holiday meal to my gathered family on December 28, 2003. I didn't even get to enjoy any of the traditional Christmas ales that I had picked up for the occasion. I don't remember anything that happened immediately following the meal or until about the eighth day of my hospitalization.
Apparently, my health and alertness declined steadily immediately after I presented the smoked salmon and turkey I had prepared on my Texas-style smoker grill. Finally, Gail, my wife, decided to take me to see our family doctor at Soteria Family Health Center, a clinic whose mission is not only to provide compassionate health care but also to do so within the context of Christ's healing mercy and aided with ample prayer.
How my tiny wife managed to get me into the car remains a mystery to both of us. Somehow, Gail got me to the clinic, where I was immediately taken to an examination room and put on an IV for rehydration. The doctor told Gail that I would likely be on the IV for up to three hours, so she took the opportunity to go back home to make sure her mother understood that she (my mother-in-law) would have to take care of our two-year-old daughter, allowing Gail to return to my side at the clinic.
When Gail arrived home, the phone was ringing. It was the clinic calling to inform her that I was being taken to the North Memorial in an ambulance. I was
completely unaware of my condition or my surroundings, having no memory of being in the clinic or being brought by ambulance to the hospital.
By the time Gail reached the hospital, they already had me stripped and dressed in a too-small hospital gown. I am a big man, standing
6 feet 2 inches tall and weighing over 300 pounds (prior to hospitalization). I was agitated and delirious, forcing the ICU team to tie
me down. At some point, I managed to shred one of the lamb's wool lined webbed cuffs and pull the IV out of my arm. The security team
had its hands full.
Gail arrived at the ICU in time to see the nurses and security officers attempting to retie me to the bed. Even though I was extremely agitated and combative, the doctor allowed her to approach me. She spoke to me, and somehow her voice soothed me. It wasn't just her voice, but rather her quick thinking that saved us all a lot of bother. I was formerly an Air Force flight crewmember, and Gail had been a flight attendant with Northwest Airlines. Realizing that training and instinct would take over, Gail knew just what to say. “Ready for take off,” she declared, “All crew members strap in for immediate lift off.” I stopped struggling and allowed the security crew to strap down my hands and feet.
Later, when I was struggling to breathe, the nurses attempted to place an oxygen mask over my nose and mouth. I resisted, but my wife had remained at my side, and she once again took over by announcing, “We're losing cabin pressure! All crew members don oxygen masks!” I stopped fighting and allowed the oxygen mask to be strapped in place. The ICU staff was very impressed with Gail's role-playing, and I'm sure they were glad that they had allowed her to stay close at hand. Never would they have known to play such a useful trick on me. I would not have known of my wife's quick thinking and stoic resolve to assist had it not been for the attending physician's amazement at her courage under such intense pressure. The doctor told me of Gail's heroics some 10 days later, as I lay recovering in the ward.
Gail was a witness to everything they did to me, from CT scans to spinal taps (lumbar punctures), to pick lines for IV ports in both my arms. It was nerve-wracking for her, as she sensed the urgency and uncertainty among the attending staff. The first thing the doctors were looking at was bacterial encephalitis, which is very lethal if not treated immediately. I was given a cocktail of potent antibiotics that were so strong they were killing my kidneys. Gail didn't know that at the time, but the lab results came back swiftly, so they were able to stop that line of treatment before permanent damage was done.
They also looked at herpes simplex virus (HSV) as a potential pathogen. I'm glad Gail was also ignorant of the lethality of this form of encephalitis and more glad still that the test results were negative.
At one point, while still in the ICU, I crashed with a seizure. Thankfully, Gail was not in the room at the time, because the staff, I was told by my brother-in-law, thought they were surely about to lose me. Gail had gone home to assess the situation with her mother and to check on our daughter. And once again the phone was ringing when she got home. The bad news brought her immediately back to the hospital.
The doctors were unable to determine the source of my illness and were working systematically down a list from the worst cause to less severe causes. They were able to rule out all of the worst causes, but they were not able to identify the one that was affecting me. My doctor believes that I became ill with viral encephalitis as a complication of the nasty flu bug that had just made the rounds. I had gotten the flu shot and thought I was protected, so I didn't think the terrible sinus congestion I was suffering was worth a visit to the clinic, a decision I dearly regret now. I think it is safe to say that the cause of my encephalitis will remain a mystery.
Of course, I was totally oblivious to everything that was going on, though I must have somehow, deep inside myself, held on to Gail's voice and felt her
spirit with me. When I was finally moved from the ICU, after 8 days of total oblivion, and brought out to a ward, I had already begun
to show remarkable resilience in my recovery, well, physically anyway. I was able to sit up and eat supper, although I do not remember
doing it, on my first night in the ward.
What I do remember of the first few days in the ward was a sense that I had been captured by enemies of the state. My room seemed, in my altered state of
mind, to be a screened off section in an abandoned warehouse, converted into a make-shift medical facility for the purpose of extracting
information from me. I felt like I had been abandoned there, fairly certain that I had revealed no information and was therefore useless
to my captors. I lay there pretending I was unconscious (maybe I really was unconscious!), while plotting my escape. Thank the Lord I
was too weak to get out of bed! I can just see the headlines: “Vietnam Vet Kills Orderly in Bid for Freedom.” Yikes! I wonder if the hospital
has any understanding of the special circumstances they face when treating veterans.
With each passing day, my hospital room took on more and more of its real attributes. Eventually, I had become aware that I was in fact confined to a hospital
room. But even as my mind seemed to embrace reality, my body could not lay claim to the comfort of any warmth. I was so cold! The nurses
covered me with four blankets, yet I shivered, desperately wishing for warmth. I covered my head with the blankets, hoping to trap the
warmth from my own breath under the covers. But it was not to be. I was simply freezing my butt off. When the patient in the bed beside
me complained of being too hot, and visitors there agreed with him, I realized something must be wrong with me.
For the next few days of my hospital stay, I alternately cycled through periods of abject freezing cold, dry fever, sweaty fever, cold clammy chills, and abject cold. Over and over again, these chills and fevers tortured me. Since having returned home, I have not suffered any chills or fever, but I have had a miserable backache that began with spasms while I was still in the hospital.
I'm not sure if my back pain is from the residual effects of encephalitis, from the weeks of immobilization in the hospital, or from the
spinal taps, but it is the single most important thing on my mind at the moment. While I was in the hospital, the nurses would come by
and screw a syringe onto one of my IV ports and load me up with morphine. It was the only way I could get to sleep at night. The doctor
sent me home with a prescription for an oral formulation of morphine, but I was up to the maximum daily dosage and all I got for the effort
was a headache from the morphine and no relief from the back pain, so I stopped taking the morphine altogether. Now I am just relying
on sleep and physical therapy, both of which come at intervals that are almost unbearably far apart. The therapist is convinced that my back pain is not related to muscle or skeletal problems and suspects neurological problems.
I've been going to Occupational Therapy, where, as a stay-at-home dad, the objective is to ensure that I can run my household safely and
communicate effectively with family members. Nothing can be taken for granted. I have to double check to make sure I've turned off a burner
after cooking, or the water after washing vegetables. I can't remember where I left things, and have to retrace my steps to find them.
The OT folks have provided some useful information to help me deal with short-term memory problems.
During my OT evaluation, the examiner casually asked, “So, you been doing any driving since you've been home?” I said, “Well, I drove
my wife to work yesterday so I could have the car for my PT session.” “Aaaaaa! Wrong answer,” declared my therapist. I'm not supposed
to be driving for months, or until my doctor tells me it's okay. The therapist explained that the biggest problem with driving isn't whether
or not I can compensate for my own perception difficulties but whether I can react to the stupidity of other drivers on the road. He is
entirely correct. It's the other people on the road that land you back in the hospital. So, I consider myself duly chastised, and I will
henceforth allow my wife to chauffeur me around to my daily appointments.
I am not having any particular problem with communications, but I do sense that the pace of my speech has slowed quite a bit. I'm from
the northern part of the U.S., where we tend to speak with a certain rapidity, as opposed to southerners, whose speech tends to drip out
with all the speed of molasses. Now, I find myself wishing I could finish my own sentences more quickly. Odd, it is, that I feel like
I am well able to pull the words out of my memory banks and load them in the proper sequence, but they just don't seem to come out of
my mouth as fast as they should, or used to. Who knows, maybe this is a good thing. Maybe I'll get more opportunities to keep from putting
my foot in my mouth.
I feel so impatient with the healing process! I feel useless being unable to do the simplest things, and worse yet, running out of energy
before a task is half done. My doctor assures me that this is normal and that it is a long process to full recovery. He stressed that
I need to be patient and avoid overexertion. When you have an exuberant two-year-old child in the house and a one-year-old, I have to
wonder if I’ll ever regain my strength and stamina. Take it easy and get lots of rest is all I keep hearing, but life doesn't just slow
down especially for you. I pray that my recovery goes faster than expected. I pray also that your recoveries are more swift and thorough
than you have heretofore experienced. God bless you all, including both patients and the family members who have been affected by this
illness.
Addendum: It appears now that the backache I complained of is not associated with encephalitis, which is of some small relief. It is now
a bigger mystery, however, as an MRI revealed fractures in three of my vertebra and damage to the respective disks beneath each. I have
been told that I managed to escape my bindings twice, and I must have injured myself in the process. I guess I not only didn't know myself,
but I didn't know my own strength! I do not recall any trauma during my lucid moments, and the pain seems to have appeared only shortly
after I had regained cognizance. What happened while my lights were out? I don't know, but these fractures will heal and the pain will
stop.
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Doug
Minnesota, U.S.A.
Posted: April 5, 2004 |
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