The Luckiest Unlucky Man Alive

"I have to be very candid with you. With the level of sepsis that you have, for every six patients treated in the U.S., one survives."

So said the ICU physician at St. Alphonsus Regional Medical Center in Boise, Idaho to me two months ago today on September 25, 2012. So here it is two months later on Thanksgiving weekend, and I am particularly grateful to be alive. Upon hearing these words, I looked up at my totally amazing wife, Michelle, who was standing by my side, and without exchanging a word shared a look like, "Did you just hear what I just heard?"

So let’s back up a bit and I’ll say how I got there. The story starts about 11 months prior to this. I had just wrapped up some business in Tokyo when I had developed a high fever and wicked chills. I slept it off, though, and flew on to Shanghai the following morning. Still feeling a bit under the weather, I gave a speech at an industry event there, then flew on to Shenzhen in southern China.

The whole flight down to Shenzhen (about 3 hours) I felt really awful. Long story short, I ended up in a hospital in Shenzhen – an experience I won’t soon forget. In consultation with my doctors at home, we feared that it was an acute onset of prostate cancer, so I was ordered to be on the next available flight home. After an "entertaining" and ultimately successful attempt at crossing the border in to Hong Kong with a fever of more than 103F, I made it home.

Fortunately, upon getting home we determined that it was merely an acute prostate infection, easily cured by some aggressive antibiotics. Even still, though, the prostate never quite fully returned to "normal" and we continued to monitor things. After nearly a year of monitoring things, my doctors determined, "We really doubt you have prostate cancer, but we would be irresponsible if we did not check."

Now, I won’t share the details of this minor medical procedure, but I had a prostate biopsy done on September 24, 2012. [FYI: Confirmed that I do not have prostate cancer.] At the time, I was told that there was less than a 1% risk of infection with the procedure. Sure enough, I realized that risk; hence, the "unluckiest" part of this story.

The doctors told me to keep watch for a fever, and that any fever of over 100F in the next 24 hours necessitated a hasty trip to a hospital emergency room. The following afternoon I started feeling a little achy, and within an hour of that I started getting really bad shakes. Just really bad shivering. I took my temperature and it was only 99F; however, knowing that I normally run a little bit "cold" (97F as opposed to the "normal" 98.6F), I called my doctor’s office. I asked, "So not being 100F, do I still need to go to the emergency room?" After confirming my shivering, he told me, "No. Head straight to the hospital. We’ll pre-admit you and keep you at least overnight for treatment." OK then. By the time I got to the hospital, my fever had already topped 102F.

So, lucky break #1: I didn’t play the typical male; I actually called the doctor right away.

Lucky break #2: Within 30 minutes of calling my doctor, I was in the hospital and on intravenous antibiotics to fight what was a rapidly spreading infection.

By 6pm I was in the hospital, feeling extremely achy everywhere and shivering with a high fever.

By 9pm, in a regular hospital room, I had been administered to and felt somewhat stabilized. My fever was a more manageable 101-ish. The doctor told me, though, that things could get worse before they got better, and they had notified the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) of my condition and to be ready for me "just in case." Despite this, we sent Michelle home to be with the kids that night, and she was on standby just in case things turned.

And turn they did. Sometime shortly after 10pm, my fever shot back up. Way up. I started shivering uncontrollably. My heart rate had raced past 160 beats per minute, but my blood pressure had dropped to something like 40 over 20 – it was working like crazy but not doing anything. I couldn’t breathe. As they were calling in medical staff from all over the floor, at some point I passed out, and I’m glad I "wasn't around" to experience all of what happened. The next I knew, it was about 10:40pm and I was regaining consciousness, now in the ICU. They were saying something about the infection shutting my heart down, and that they had "brought me back."

Lucky break #3: The ICU physician on call that night was Dr. Joseph Crowley, whom one of the ICU nurses later explained to me has a personal interest in septicemia or sepsis, infections of the blood, and he happens to be one of the Pacific Northwest’s leading experts on the subject.

That first night in the ICU was when Dr. Crowley explained to my wife and I that with the level of infection I had, 1 in 6 patients survived. What the infection did as it ran its course through my bloodstream was that it shut down vital organs such as the heart, liver and kidneys. He was quite direct with us, to convince us of what needed to be done. And he needed my release signatures for the treatment. I won’t go in to all of the details, but I will tell you that the treatments were some of the most painful things I’ve ever had to endure.

Some six hours after treatment started he told Michelle, "John is responding very well to the treatments, and I don’t think he’s going to die anymore." So I was unlucky to get there, lucky to survive it: the luckiest unlucky man alive.

I gotta tell you about this totally awesome medical technology that was an important part of saving my life. It’s just SO cool. Part of the treatment involved putting a central intravenous line directly in to my chest (OUCH!). Through that line they pumped in a very strong, broad-spectrum antibiotic to fight the infection. But this second part is what’s so cool. In my right wrist, they put in an "arterial line" which was an I.V. that went in to an artery (OUCH!! OUCH!!). They put this arterial line in guided by an ultrasound. Michelle had left the room while they did this, but my 21-year-old son Christopher stayed in the room, and he said it was totally cool to watch on screen. This line was not for intravenous fluids, but through this line they fed a 18-inch electrical line up through that artery. The line "coiled up" in the artery, and it measured my blood pressure with every heartbeat. This arterial line in my wrist was linked electronically to my central line I.V., and when my blood pressure started dropping, it instantaneously pumped in medicine to counter it. Is that COOL, or what? Oh the wonders of modern medicine!

In the picture here (kind of grainy – sorry), you can see five small TV-like screens; these are the electronic controls of the various I.V.s I was on in the ICU. Earlier this month I was having dinner with a customer in China about this really cool medical technology, and he was amazed. He said, "Here in China, you would have just died." I am truly grateful for such amazing medical technology.

I spent four days in the hospital, two of those days in the ICU.  After surviving sepsis, I thought Michelle might kill me when I suggested that the day after I got out of the hospital I carry on with a planned trip to Copenhagen that following day. I did end up, however, taking off about three weeks without any business travel. Doctors told me that I would feel generally beat up and a little tired for 2-3 months as I recovered from this. Though recovery has been a little slow, I’m generally feeling pretty strong, and glad to be alive! :-)

When told I had a 1 in 6 chance of survival, my immediate thought turned to my wife. I looked at her and she looked amazingly strong. My second thought was to my children. My third thought was to my work family; we had lost an associate to cancer earlier in the year and I remembered how devastating that had been to the company. Those thoughts ran a course of a few seconds and then I pushed them out. As Dr. Crowley put in the central line I.V., during that great pain I said through gritted teeth, "Don’t let me die, doctor; I’m not done here yet."

I know the work that he did to save my life was amazing. I also know that the hundreds if not thousands of prayers sent up on my behalf were also of great benefit. The faith, fasting and prayers of many helped to save my life, and I am eternally grateful. The infection didn’t get me, and my kids said later they want to make me a tee shirt: "Part of the Seventeen Percent Club."

Truly the luckiest unlucky man alive, and certainly very blessed!!!

Thank you so much for your love, prayers and support.