Some of you may have noticed my name has been absent from bylines for several months.
I hope I was missed because I sure missed the folks I write for and the readers.
I’m working on a comeback.
I wasn’t fired, suffering Covid-19 or out of the county.
However, I have been away from my home since February fighting my way back from the brink of death, twice.
I have been absent due to bouts of double pneumonia in both lungs and an extremely painful stay at a Cuyahoga County rehab/therapy facility.
Please take a walk with me backwards – to February and I’ll explain.
I had a fall at home. I was already rehabbing from a back injury and using a walker. And I had been sick days before the fall, but I didn’t realize it.
The fall happened after my ankle twisted and I slowly slid to the ground. I didn’t have the strength to pull myself up and as I fell, my right knee landed on the top of my mom’s foot, fracturing it. And as I hit the ground, I must have hit my head on my couch.
I didn’t know about the eye until my family told me that one of my eyes had blackened by the next morning.
The fall set me on a nightmarish trip, which also included more than one visit to the intensive care unit as well as a broken tooth, clavicle, and arm.
The few days before and after the fall are still a bit fuzzy.
I don’t remember the paramedics being called or my ride to the hospital.
But I do remember the hallucinations.
At one point, as I was being wheeled into a section of the hospital. I watched large larvae-like creatures crawling in and around the ivy-covered walls.
There is no ivy on the walls of this hospital.
I also imagined the larvae being eaten by huge moth-like birds.
I also remember the concrete block dungeon I was wheeled to by the nursing staff.
I told a nurse what I saw. She was grossed out.
The creatures were in my mind, and it got worse.
As I was in the emergency room waiting to be examined, a popular movie about men dressed in black was playing – I think.
I believed the nurses and doctors at the hospital were in my room, while also acting as characters in the movie.
It was freaky.
For some reason I also thought the emergency room staff was trying to kill me.
The reason?
I believed I overheard one person on a cell phone saying, “We will take him to southern Ohio and bury him.”
I imagined myself featured on a cable crime show as officials searched for my body.
I even knew how they were going to kill me. I looked up and saw two large boards which appeared on a shelf.
I thought I was going to be beaten to death.
My mind said, “no way.” I was not going to go gentle into that dark night – I was going to fight. So, I tried to grab my backpack to look for a knife. I was going to defend myself. I still don’t know what I was grabbing for, but I didn’t have a backpack with me.
I did have my cell phone and called both my brother and sister to come get me.
“They are trying to kill me.” I cried. “Help me. Please come get me.”
I was assured by both that I was only hallucinating and that I would be okay.
I almost wasn’t. I slipped into a coma.
“We don’t expect him (me) to make it through the night,” the emergency room doc told my family over the phone. “We can keep him alive long enough for you to come say goodbye, if need be.”
The family was told I could be put on a machine, to keep my body alive.
“But when we take Tim off, he will die,” the doc said.
The doc also suggested, on a conference call, that my family should begin plans for my funeral.
My family was beside themselves. My brother, Dave, started calling fiends asking if they would be pallbearers. I just found this out as I wrote this.
Recently I asked my mom about that night. She cried.
At the time I had no idea how sick I was.
A few hours later I slipped into a coma from lack of oxygen in my system. As members of my family slept at my house, awaiting, and dreading the expected call from the hospital.
However, thanks to a lot of prayer, liters and liters of oxygen and bags of intravenous meds, I came out of the coma the next morning and started slowly improving.
When I called my mom the next morning and told her I was OK, she was ecstatic and called the family. My brother thought she was joking at first.
After what could have been days or weeks, I was stable enough to be moved to a regular room.
However, after a short stay, my blood oxygen level, which should be more than 90 percent, dropped below 60.
It was back to Intensive care.
Several days later I was stable again and transferred to an Akron “step-down” facility for further stabilization before being sent to a rehab facility.
While in the step-down facility I complained of my right shoulder hurting. An X-ray showed I had broken my right clavicle (collarbone) when I fell.
The doc also said my humerus (arm) had an old break. I don’t remember breaking my arm – ever.
But I remember the pain.
But the arm was the least of my worries.
I woke up one night at the facility to find my room full of medical staff and a nurse stroking my right shoulder begging me to “Breathe Tim. Just breathe.”
My pulse oxygen level had dropped below 60 percent.
After that my already high-flow oxygen was increased from 40 liters per minute to 60 per minute.
Between the hospital and the step-down faculty, I was in bed for almost two months.
Because of my need for high-flow oxygen, few rehab places could handle me. I was sent to the closest rehab facility, just north of the Summit County line.
After the first night there I wished I had died.
I won’t go into detail, but I was forced to lay in more bodily fluids and waste materials than I had since I was a baby.
The highlight of my days at the Cuyahoga County rehab were my therapists.
They were great until a wheelchair was too far out of sitting range as my knee gave out while walking.
I fell forward and lost one half of a tooth (which is still painful and has never been looked at), but I continued working with them and standing for short periods of time. I was not only working out during my therapy sessions, but doing two sessions of workouts, in my bed. On my own.
By now it was early May. I had been getting bed baths from the staff maybe once every few weeks. Not good.
One afternoon two aides decided I could take a shower.
Mind you, my legs and arms were, and still are, weak from being in bed for almost two months.
On that shower day I was being lifted from the bed to a shower chair by a special battery operated hydraulic-type device. I was about four feet in the air – then I fell.
Yes fell.
My head hit the hard tiled floor first. My right ear was swollen and dripping blood and my upper arm, near the shoulder, was under my body and broken.
My upper right back was hurting, and each breath felt like an ice pick was being stuck into my lung.
It was bad.
I was rushed to a Beechwood hospital. After an X-ray I was diagnosed with the broken arm.
My head was also swollen and when I moved my eyes or body, the room began spinning. And for almost two weeks after, each time I closed my eyes, I re-lived the fall. That’s never happened to me before.
I refused to go back and was transferred to a Tallmadge rehab facility.
June seventh marked my third week here. And while my arm is still broken, I’m able to do some writing.
Pain?
Oh yeah. Some days I’m almost in tears, but I’m working hard to get home, so I can get back to writing full time.
Like I said, I really miss you, the readers.
One good thing happened through this hellish journey. I’ve lost well over 100 pounds.
When I was initially admitted to the hospital, I had retained so much water that my hands were swollen.
A lot of the lost weight was from fluid.
Since the fall, due to working out and watching my calories, I’m down at least 14 more pounds.
I plan on keeping up the workouts when I get home as well as logging every calorie.
I’m hoping as soon as the arm is healed that I can start walking. After that I want to go home. I need to go home. I need to write.
Working out is great therapy but what I have missed is my favorite type of therapy-writing.
Thanks for taking this trip with me and allowing me to share my spring break.
I hope yours was more exciting and especially less painful.
