My STORY

Not for the feint of heart.

TLDR: Major medical issues leaves me disabled after spending 6 weeks in a coma, and now I can't return to previous jobs.

Read on if want to hear more.

On March 1st, 2014, I awoke feeling like I had heartburn. Annoyed by the 5:00 am wake up call, I attempted to go back to sleep. Waking up again an hour later, still feeling the same, I decided to get up and just sit up on the couch to see if sitting upright would alleviate the discomfort. Shortly after I started feeling lightheaded, and began to think there was more going on than simply heartburn. At about 6:30, I realized I needed to go to the hospital to get checked out since something really felt off. As I began to get ready, my legs felt very shaky and had pain similar to the "pins and needles" sensation most have experienced some time in their life. I then, quite stupidly I must admit, attempted to drive myself to the hospital. About half way there, my lightheadedness turned into almost passing out, and I knew if I did not pull over and call 911, I was going to kill myself and/or someone else. So, I pulled over, and an ambulance arrives shortly after to take me to the hospital. I remember things from that point on only somewhat. I was in and out of consciousness for the next several hours, but I do know I was at the first hospital for around 5 hours before I was diagnosed. I then remember being loaded into a helicopter and taken to another hospital a reason I at the time did not know.

I woke up knowing I had lost time. I knew it was a Saturday I had gone into the hospital, so I believed it was either Monday or Tuesday. I looked around the room since I was alone at the time, and saw a drawing of a birthday cake on the marked board in the room. I thought the person who was in the room before me must have had a birthday. Shortly thereafter, a nurse followed by other staff entered my room, trying to figure out how alert I was. Then my mom entered, and started talking to me. I couldn't speak at the time due to the tracheotomy, but I understood everything she told me and responded the best way I could. The information she gave me was astounding. First, my parents were not even notified that something had happened to me until I was on the helicopter, several hours after the incident. No one had told them, not even me... oops. Mom had stayed in the hospital with me the entire time, while dad had to go back to work, so he was back in their home state. Then came the shocking part: it was in fact my birthday, meaning I had been out for 6 weeks. I was placed in a medically induced coma to give me a better chance to recover, and they had slowly started to take me off of the medication keeping me asleep, and I had managed to wake up on April 11th, my actual birthday. She went on to tell me that I had a major surgery, due to a very serious issue which the doctors would go on to define as a dissected aortic aneurysm, or just an aortic dissection depending on which doctor I am currently talking with. The surgeon who performed the operation visited me a couple of days later, and told me that in his 30+ years of experience as a cardio-thoracic surgeon, mine was the largest dissection he had ever seen. The, of course, he wanted to take a selfie with me to put on his wall of fame.

So the recovery process began shortly thereafter. The day after I woke up, I was deemed fit to take a drink of water, and a couple of days later, I could eat food on my own. Then, at the beginning of May, I was transferred to a skilled care home/rehab facility. I slowly relearned how to do most of the basic things we all do every day: talking, moving, bathing, dressing, using the bathroom, and of course, walking. Funnily enough, I also had a photo of myself taken by the rehab staff to go on their wall of fame. Who knew that my greatest achievements would be almost dying and the recovery afterwards. On June 20th, I was released from the facility and allowed to go "home", though in this case that meant my parent's house, not my apartment. My apartment already had the lease broken, so I couldn't go back even if I was capable of living on my own. Over the next few years, several things happened: 1. I was able to walk without needing walkers or canes. 2. I found several doctors who were specialized in my areas of need (heart and kidneys). 3. I had a follow up surgery to repair some damage done by the incident, which resulted in the amputation of all my toes on my left foot. 4. I got good insurance to keep up with the care I needed. 5. I tried several times in a couple of different ways to go back to work, but was unable due to not being able to stand for long periods of time. The federal government decided that I was too "healthy" to give me disability benefits, so I have spent the better part of the last decade doing odd jobs for family and friends just to afford gas money to see my doctors. And now, I'm trying this because I don't have a lot of options left. So, here we are.