GBS and Angioplasty: Celebrate and Treasure the Magnificence of Life

You can only go halfway into the dark forest before you start coming back out.
-Chinese Proverb, Craig Hospital Bulletin Board

PART 1: HEADING INTO THE DARK FOREST
"It's good to see you/good to hear from you again. How are you?"
The expected response, usually a Pavlovian "Fine," was not to be this year. It has definitely not been how we like to describe our ideal but rare plane travel, as "uneventful."

I knew I would lose my job yearend or soon after and did, January 11. After 55 years of working I could only guess what freedom that new season of our life would be like. We worked hard for it, earned it, deserved it, and were by golly, eager to explore and enjoy it.

First, the tidying up of the house, inside and outside, and of our "stuff" (you know the drill), and we got a grand start at that. Then the fickle finger of fate struck Monday, Feb. 26.

Gino DePalma, Golden police officer of eleven years, husband of our youngest daughter Tami, and father of two-year-old Dominic, got a tingling in his fingers and toes. He "googled" the symptoms and headed to the doctor who initially thought it to be "nerves" or "stress," perhaps a virus.

As he reviewed what Gino had found on Guillaine-Barre Syndrome he directed Gino immediately to St. Anthony's Hospital Central. Within 24 hours Gino was paralyzed from the neck down, a quadriplegic unable to breathe on his own.

Whoever heard of "GBS"? It's a one-in-a-hundred-thousand event, where, following a body's infection, a person's anti-bodies, instead of attacking the germs, attack the body's nerves, to create "ascending paralysis." The prognosis is good, that is, many, most, if not all faculties can be regained. But healing can take weeks, months, even years.

How could this happen? Not yet 40 years old, Gino had been a school resource officer at Bell Junior High in Golden, and for two years, a member of the Jefferson County SWAT team. He was a range instructor, training other police officers in the use of firearms. Even more strange, he and wife Tami had won the EAS company "Body for Life" challenge to become the national second runner-up couple in 2000.

We were cautioned by people who knew, to have family in the intensive care unit 24/7-- around the clock--and we did, taking turns tending to a man who could not move and could communicate only with eye blinks and slight head nods. Treatment was competent and continual.

Hospital personnel cleansed his blood and tended carefully to his inert, lifeless condition. One hospital cost estimate was in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, of which most would be covered by insurance, while expenses mounted.

Fortunately, after three weeks, Gino was able to breathe room air on his own and the respirator removed, just in time to qualify for acceptance at Englewood's Craig Rehabilitation Hospital (celebrating its 100 years anniversary). He spent another three months there, getting round-the-clock professional medical care and family attendance (that engendered 40-mile roundtrip drives many times a week).

Gino had indicated he did not want to shave or see his son, or have his son see him. After a long month, it was time. Gino, with new goatee, "shark wave" hairdo and what smile he could muster, was in front of the opened elevator when their eyes met. Gino asked Tami to wipe his tears of joy-he was unable to.

Dominic threw two toy balls for Gino to catch. Tami picked them off the floor and threw them back to the boy. Gino asked for a hug and a kiss of his son and got both. Back in his room, Dominic was sitting on the bed feeding Gino ice cubes one at a time as directed.

Tami had taken up residence in the home-like anteroom adjacent to Gino's treatment room and virtually lived there for the duration, cramped quarters for her and the energetic two-year-old.

PART 2:
You can only go halfway into the dark forest before you start coming back out.
-- Chinese Proverb, Craig Hospital Bulletin Board

In Part 1, Golden police officer Gino DePalma gets a tingling in hands and feet to where his doctor sends him directly and urgently to St. Anthony Central Hospital to be treated for the ultra-rare Gullaine-Barre Syndrome. Within a day he is paralyzed from the neck down, unable to breathe, placed on a respirator. The family sets up round-the-clock vigil, wife Tami takes charge, leaving 2-year-old Dominic in Tami's Mom Dottie's care. Medical science gets him back able to breathe room air just in time to qualify for convalescence at world-famous Craig Hospital where Tami and Dominic set up housekeeping adjacent to Gino's treatment room to bring him back.

Gino received daily triple therapy-physical, speech and occupational, plus weekly hydrotherapy designed to support his body while his muscles learned how to function again. At three months he was able to stand up in the water, and the next week, to "walk" around. His doctor assured him that he would one day be able to do normally whatever he could do only in the water.

A few weeks later was my Saturday night to be with Gino to 11 pm. I then drove the 20 miles home along Santa Fe Drive, I-25 and I-70, noticing tightness in my upper chest and beneath my left collarbone.

I had a glass of wine to relax and went to bed. At 5:30 Sunday morning I awoke with the same symptoms and at 6 o'clock had a sweating meltdown. I began to take aspirin and monitor my blood pressure. At a diastolic (lower) blood pressure over a hundred, I told wife Dottie we better do something different.

We went to the urgent care clinic at 52nd and Wadsworth, got an EKG that appeared all right, but with advice to go to the emergency room for a blood test. We got right in and when the tending doctor said, "Mr. Holden, you've had a heart attack," adding that the aspirin may have saved my life. Dottie put her head in her hands crying, "But what about Gino and Tami and Dominic?"

For us, that situation had to be put on hold with doctor's orders of no driving or lifting over 10 pounds, and a whole new lifestyle and regimen of diet, exercise, nutrition and stress handling. This followed my angioplasty and two stents-heart arteries inserts, and a second, minor heart attack from a blockage caused by the procedure.

I was lucky. The arteries in my heart were only partially blocked and amenable to angioplasty rather than bypass surgery.
A couple weeks later I found myself articulating some dark humor: "They said, 'cheer up, things could get worse,' so I cheered up ... and things got worse!"

Happy endings are happening. I have successfully passed a Nuclear Cardiac Treadmill Stress Test and finished my 12 cardiac rehabilitation sessions on the treadmill and stationary bicycle at Lutheran Hospital. It's reassuring to be instrumented and monitored while gradually increasing exercise intensity and endurance to build up the heart, lungs, arteries and body systems.

Their professional staff provides nine one-hour educational sessions that include Stress I, II, and III, Nutrition I, II, and III, heart anatomy and risk factors, chest discomfort and medications, exercise principles and exercising with diabetes.

It is my considered judgment that these nine hours should be taught in the high school and college curricula which is in competition with the incessant intensive selling of the print and electronic media, and various sugar beverages and junk food in the schools to raise a few more dollars.

Constructive lifestyle habits learned early in life can make a better middle life and more enjoyable later life, perhaps to better avoid angioplasty, bypass and stroke.

In Gino's being released from Craig, one person was heard saying if he remained another day it would cost another $3,000. He came home on June 12, the day Craig personnel had set. After four months Gino returned to his home that had been modified for wheel chair and handicap access, especially important because their first, entrance floor had only a kitchen and living room, now his bedroom, convalescing and recuperation place, and temporary outside shower facility.

Friends, fans and supporters have set up the Officer Gino DePalma Healing Fund, 1st Bank, PO Box 507, Arvada, CO 80001.
We are slowly leaving the dark forest but we are still not out of the woods.

Life is good. But you never know how good till you see life and yourself in different places trying to get back together. When you get up in the morning, go through your routine, go to work, hug your family and do your thing, celebrate and treasure life as a many splendored gift. Capture its magnificence.
And keep an aspirin handy. Acknowledge, respect and cherish the now of life. It's all you have.

Fred Holden is an Arvada author and father in law of Gino DePalma.