Each week, the Shreveport-Bossier Journal’s Tony Taglavore takes to lunch a local person – someone who is well-known, successful, and/or influential, and asks, “What’s Your Story?”
(Editor’s Note: This series usually details someone’s life story. However, this week’s installment focuses on a six-month period of one person’s life.)
By TONY TAGLAVORE, Journal Services
It was supposed to be an hour-long day surgery.
But getting out that pesky gallbladder took three hours.
The patient was in more pain than expected, so he stayed a couple of days in the hospital. On a Sunday morning, he went home. Surely he would be back to his old self in no time.
“I do not remember much of anything, but I do remember I got home and laid on the couch and started sweating. I think I took a nap for an hour.”
He had been encouraged by the surgeon to move around.
“I stood up, took three of four steps to the back of the recliner, and just put my head on the recliner and said, ‘I can’t walk.’”
The next thing he remembers was three weeks later, waking up in the hospital with a ventilator tube in his mouth. That’s right. There is a 21-day period of time where he doesn’t remember anything.
“I was out.”
55-year-old Brad Peace, who by his own admission probably shouldn’t be alive, told me that story – and his story – during lunch at a place he chose, Windrush Grill. Brad and his wife, Karen, shared a chicken sandwich. I did not share my bowl of Chicken & Andouille Sausage gumbo.
“I question a lot. Why? Why did they send me home? I don’t know why. I may never know why.”
Brad’s six-month “nightmare” began with “bad” abdominal pain, and what he thought was reflux. After a week, Brad went to the doctor, who gave him medicine, and instructions to call the next morning if he wasn’t better.
Brad called.
“(The doctor) said, ‘Get to the emergency room. Go. Go now.’”
Brad did, and that’s’ where he found out his gallbladder “was a mess.” It was too infected to be removed. Brad stayed in the hospital four days, where doctors put in a tube which remained for seven weeks.
“It came right out of my belly. The infection would drain into a bag. I had to wear shorts most of the time. I had cargo shorts, so I stuck that bag down into my pocket. It was disgusting.”
Finally, the infection subsided enough for surgery. But Brad now knows “the infection got into my bloodstream. It spread and shut down everything except my heart and my brain. Everything else. My lungs. My kidneys.”
Septic shock.
Some 24 hours after what was supposed to be routine surgery, Brad was close to dying.
“The doctors were telling me he was very critically ill,” Karen said. ‘There’s a chance he won’t make it. We’re going to do everything we can.’”
That night, Karen stood by her husband’s bed and played his favorite music. Blues wasn’t just the genre. It was the atmosphere in the room.
“That day was horrible.”
But as bad as that day was, the following day was good.
“The next morning when I got there, I walked in and the nurse said, ‘I didn’t think he was going to be here when I got here this morning. He’s making a turn for the better.’”
Sure enough, Brad was rounding the corner. But he faced a long, winding road to recovery.
“I could not walk. I couldn’t lift my arms. I couldn’t turn my head. I couldn’t do anything.
That included eating.
“I was a big boy, and I lost 70 pounds. For a good month and a half, I didn’t eat. I couldn’t eat. It made me ill to even look at food, because they were pumping so many antibiotics through my system.”
To make matters worse, Brad developed a Stage 4, baseball-size pressure sore on his tailbone.
“They couldn’t turn or flip me, because every time they did that, the machines started going off.”
“Your blood pressure would drop and your heart rate would go through the roof,” Karen remembered.
After right at a month in the hospital, Brad was well enough to be transferred to a rehabilitation hospital. But his recovery took a detour.
“My stomach started bloating. It got hard and extended. I developed an infection on the wall of my intestine. They drained three liters of fluid off me. They sent me back to the hospital for another week.”
And the hospital sent Brad back to rehab with another drain. He stayed three weeks.
“I did physical therapy, occupational therapy, speech therapy. I did it all. I had to learn how to do everything.”
But there were some things Brad was just too weak to do, at least by himself.
“That is one of the worst feelings, when you can’t do anything. You can’t shower. You can’t go to the bathroom for yourself. You have somebody else that has to help do that for you.”
Finally, it was time for Brad to go home. It’s a good thing he had Karen to take him.
“I had forgotten what I drove. I had forgotten what the house looked like. I didn’t know where I lived. I didn’t know anything. It was crazy.”
Brad is slowly getting better. But don’t confuse that with the new Brad being the old Brad.
“I’m pretty angry most of the time – at everything. All I can say is I’m pretty mad. I stay mad. I’m not like that. I’ve never been one who says pissed off all the time, but I am.”
The pressure sore has healed, but still hurts, “along with everything else. All my joints. My muscles. My back. My knees. My ankles.” That has a lot to do with Brad’s anger.
“I go to different doctors probably seven or eight times a month. It’s not over.”
But when push comes to shove, Brad looks at the glass as half full.
“The alternative would be a lot worse. I could be dead.”
Feeling guilt for complaining when I stub my toe, I decided it was time to ask my final question. What is it about his half-a-year story (including two months of home health and two months of outpatient therapy) that might be helpful to others? Brad isn’t the philosophical type, so he deferred to Karen.
“Let’s don’t talk about what we want to do some time,” Karen said. “Let’s do it. We want to go to the beach? Let’s go to the beach. We missed out on that last year. He loves to play golf. Make a tee time. Go play golf with your buddies. Don’t say, ‘Hey, next week’ or ‘We’ve always wanted to.’ Let’s just do it.”
Miraculously, now, Brad is able to just do it.
Do you know someone with a story? Email SBJTonyT@gmail.com.
The Journal’s weekly “What’s Your Story?” series is sponsored by Morris & Dewett Injury Lawyers.