Pastor Jayne Thompson

Pastor Jayne Thompson wrote her story of survival in September of 2008:

It seems odd to be writing this when a week ago, I was in an ICU fighting for my life. Some may call it luck or good fortune. Others may say blessed or specially chosen. I just like to think it’s pure grace: a mystery, a gift. Who knows why one out of three people die from sepsis and the others live? “All night, all day. O Lordy, angles watchin’ over me my Lord.”

From the National Institute of Health: “Sepsis is a life-threatening illness. Your body’s response to bacterial infection usually causes it. Your immune system goes into overdrive, overwhelming normal process in  your blood. The result is that small blood clots form, blocking blood flow to vital organs. This can lead to organ failure. Babies, old people and those with weakened immune systems are most likely to get sepsis. But even healthy people can become deathly ill from it. Sepsis is usually treated in a hospital intensive care unit (ICU). Intravenous (IV) antibiotics and fluids are usually given to try to knock out the infection and to keep blood pressure from dropping too low. Patients may also need respirators to help them breathe.” Now, as an aside to God, may I ask, with all due respect, could this be perhaps a teeny-tiny design flaw in the human body? It seems like the MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) approach: in order to kill the bacteria (or virus), the body kills itself to kill the offending microbes. Not such a great plan, God. Maybe you’re working on that one?

Much of what follows is conjecture and perhaps my own intuition. My guess is that when I was bitten by something on August 18, 2008, perhaps a spider, this caused a very nasty necrotic (tissue killing) wound on my right heel, all of this was set in motion.

The Next Day

The next day it was worse, so I went to the express care doctors and was given what later the infection disease doctor (ID) called a “worthless” antibiotic. For three days, I thought it was going to get better, but it wasn’t. So, on August 22, I saw my regular doctor and she prescribed 10 days of two different antibiotics and prescription Claritin. Off I went.

Each day, I felt a little feverish, up and down. Each day, I had to put my foot up with an ice pack. I felt a bit queasy now and then. Tired a lot. And then, come Friday, August 29, I just knew something was not ok. By Saturday afternoon, the cycles of fever were getting close and the temperatures higher. I felt as though I couldn’t move and as “something was trying to shut me down,” as I explained to Jack and others. “I can’t be sick when the students come back,” I thought. “I’m a campus pastor!” I phoned the on-call physician and explained how I felt. She said I could go to the ER or wait to go to the express-care place on Sunday.

Sunday

By now, it was Sunday. I had to call a pastor friend at 1:00 a.m. to ask him to cover the Sunday service for me. I could barely move and started to have chills. I was near the end of my 10 days of antibiotics and was getting worse. This worried me.

I slept on and off all Sunday until I couldn’t stand it. So, late that afternoon, Jack took me to the express care doctor again, the same one who saw me on the 19th. He was mystified as to how I could still be so sick. He examined the bite area and said it looked sort of ok. He extended my prescription and told me to go to the ER if it got worse or to see my regular doctor on Tuesday, since Monday was Labor Day. Great. And my temperature was up to 102.5.

We got the meds and went home. The fevers and chills continued into the evening. I tried to sleep through them. Finally, I called my mom. She said, “You need to go to the hospital right now.”

For the life of me, I still can’t understand how two doctors, including one who saw me twice, could not give me the advice that my mother gave me from miles away. The infection must be in my system. I slept through another fever cycle. My son called, urging me to go to the hospital. I went downstairs and saw I had broken out in a nasty rash all over my torso. “That’s it Jack. We’re going to the ER.” We left shortly before midnight.

The Hospital

What transpired from there is not really a blur, just a stream of “hospital consciousness.” My vitals were fine upon admission, just that pesky fever. Admitted to a room with nice people and doctor in and out. It was a busy night over the Labor Day weekend in the ER.

Sometime early in the morning, say at about 6 a.m., the doc came to lance the bite wound and take cultures from it. I can only describe what it felt like viscerally in my body after he did that: a wave of violent nausea swept through me. I wretched about five times. It was like an explosion of badness in my body. Then I started to feel strange. At first, I thought it was from the release from the bite. They were about to send me home, then started talking about admitting me because the ER doc said – sad to say – that it was the quickest way to see the ID doc. Become a patient. Sounded good and ok by me. I wanted to find out what he thought of this crazy bite.

As a routine matter, they took my vitals and my blood pressure had dropped to about 80/54. They freaked as only the calm ER staff can freak. “Why is her blood pressure so low,” the nurse groaned? The doc rushed in. Didn’t know. Start an IV drip of saline. And thus began the whoosh of whisking me to the ICU. I had no idea why they were freaking out ever so quietly.

Intensive Care

I thought I was going to the regular floor for observation. Much to my surprise, they plopped a big ole monitor on my bed, hooked me up to sensors and said, “Your room orders have changed four times – you’re going to ICU.”

“What?”

“Angels watchin’ over me, my Lord,” I texted to a friend at 6:45 a.m. “in icu” – the last text message I sent until September 3. The nice ICU doc put a gross – well it was sort of creepy -central line into my vena cava. I guess. It didn’t go in right twice and kind of  hurt. “Maybe it’s a sign that I’m not supposed to have it,” I quipped. “Do I really need this?” He insisted that I did. Little did I know.

I was quite conversational, even humorous with my ICU peeps. Wonderful nurses named Melody, Heather, Pat, Matt, and Patty. These people were God’s hands, God’s mind and God’s heart, keeping me alive so that my body could fight. I was an unusually healthy ICU patient, they said. Talkative, alert, my lungs didn’t make crackling noises, I could use the bathroom – well, the commode – alone, and turned myself in bed without their aid. Apparently this was a great and astounding thing!

Dr. Math

By late afternoon on September 1, the hotshot ID doc, Thomas Math (I wouldn’t know his first name or how to spell his last name until the day I left the hospital), came swooping in on his holiday. Clad in blue jeans and a peach-ish polo shirt,  he trumpted his arrival, “Mrs. Thompson, I presume. I’m Dr. Math.” He announced that he grew up in southern Bavaria.

“Well, actually, it’s Reverend Thompson. Mrs. Thompson, my mother, lives in Iowa.”

“Very funny Pastor. So what does that make you? A Pastor? What would one call you?”

“Just Pastor,” I smiled. “Maybe Pastorette, like Smurfette of the Smurfs?” I really don’t know what comes over me to wax comedic, but I just do. People in the room just snickered.

Looking at my wound, he snorted, “That is not a brown recluse bit, not enough necrosis, definitely not that!”

“Yeah,” I said meekly. “I have only said that it could be one, most likely it would be a Yellow Sac spider. We have those in MN.”

“Well, you have sepsis. This is very dangerous and a life-threatening situation. You should know that people die from this – you could die. But we’re not going to let that happen. Still, we don’t know where or what your infection is, so we’re going to treat it with big gun antibiotics, two of them are in your IV. We’re running more tests, more labs. I will be working on this and will come to see you every day.”

“Thanks Doctor for coming in on a  holiday.” And before I could finish my sentence, he shook my hand firmly and was gone. Shortly thereafter, another doctor – not a very nice one I might add – came to see me. It seemed like I was a mere oddity to him. He looked at my heel, looked at me and blurted out, “This is not congruent with how sick you are. There are 17 other people here in ICU and we know all reasons that they have infections. We have no idea what is the matter with you!” With that, he turned on his heel and left. His abrupt bedside manner made me feel bad.

No Progress

I quickly wrote to change my Facebook status at 7:20 p.m. – pj is in the ICU with what they think is a blood infection…she feels gross and can’t use her phone.

For the first time, it dawned on me that I could be in real trouble if even they – the almighty docs – couldn’t figure out what was wrong with my little, shivering, feverish self. Different pastors and friends came in and out. Some stayed. Jack worried all night all day, angels watchin’ over me.” Me, I’m healthy, strong, fit, energetic and a martial artist. I should be able to fight this. But it was worse than shadow boxing. The enemy was invisible; bacteria inside me rampaging about, racing to and fro. Was it in my kidneys? Liver? Heart? Brain? Where?

I felt God’s presence. Didn’t get to see Jesus though and knew people everywhere were praying. So was I, mightily so. Having lived long enough to have a wizened grown-up faith and knowing that praying doesn’t always mean God rescues you, only that God will be with you and that perfectly healthy people die, I started to face the realities, still not knowing my odds: that at least one out of three people in my spot that day would die from sepsis. Their bodies just give up and shut down.

Here’s where it gets pretty drippy. Sweating through cycles of high fever, breaking a sweat, starting all over again, whispers of putting me in an ice bath, and me weeping. For about an hour, I can’t really tell you when that was – I wasn’t sure I would make it. “I might not live to see my new grandson or any other future grandchildren.” This thought saddened me and simultaneously compelled me to fight. So, as dumb as it sounds, I talked to my body like a stern coach: “Come on kidneys, keep working, don’t fail me now. Come on body, you are strong. I know you can do this. LIVE! Stop crying!” Also, crying is not helpful when you have an oxygen thingie up your news. I weep as I write.

If My Organs Start to Fail

I called my wonderful nurse, Pat. With tears welling up in my eyes, I matter-of-factly said, “Pat, I need to have a serious discussion with you. If my organs start to fail, I need to fill out a living will. I need you to help me to do that before I lose consciousness.” Pat, bless her beautiful soul, did what I’m sure they tell medical folks in boundary classes not to do. She rushed to my bedside, almost clambered in with me, held my hand and hugged me tight. She whispered stubbornly, “We are not going to let that happen to you. You are not at that point.”

I just sobbed into her and said, “OK, but you have to promise me that you will tell me if things get worse. I have to know before I can’t sign anything.” She promised. In that moment, I felt the profound primordial essence of what it means to experience in-the-marrow-of-your-bones deep caring from another human being. I had been on the giving end of that hug many times. Now it was my turn to receive and will forever be blessed and sustained by that encounter.

Late into the night, Heather helped me keep up the good fight, bathed the itchy, hive-ridden body, washed the blood out of my hair with a wet towel, administered Benadryl in my IV to calm the itchiness and so I could sleep through the big fevers, and changed my sweat-soaked sheets. It occurred to me later that I might not have awakened from these IV injections of Benadryl and passed away into a coma and death, but I was so itchy and miserable, I just trusted God working through Heather and slept. “Angels watchin’ over me, my Lord.”

Improvements

Now it was into Tuesday. The vassopressors had worked to stabilize my blood pressure. They weaned me off and I was holding my own on the BP front. Still, no known infections. Two lung x-rays: clear. Echocardiogram: clear. Off to a CT scan of my chest: results pending. Fever raging. I was so sick and miserable. Then sometime on Tuesday afternoon, they came and told me I was going to the medical floor. I worried. I wept. Pat, my “shero”, was back and told them she didn’t feel comfortable moving me, not yet. There were hushed conversations at the nurses’ station, doctors conferring. Eventually, they came with a wheelchair to take me to 417 South. I looked at myself for the first time in the mirror – shocked – I looked like death!

Wednesday and Thursday

Wednesday afternoon, hotshot Dr. Math strode in. “I changed your antibiotics – Zyvox and Levaquin. No more IV fluids. We’ll see if those work better than the stuff you’ve been on. Your O2 levels are dropping in your blood. You can’t go home until that stops. The CT scan shows that you are full of fluids that we pumped into you. It’s in your lungs. I ordered Lasix so that you can pee it out of you.” Great. Well, thankfully things went from bad to a little better.

By Thursday noon I could walk without O2, my fevers were down. Dr. Nice McFarling, didn’t know his first name either until departure day, came to see me several times, as did Dr. Angie Ausban, my very kind PC (primary care) doctor. If all my levels were stable with lower or no fevers above 100, I could go home Friday, September 5. And so I did.

Home!

Now I’m on four weeks sick leave, very weak and a shell of my former physical self. All the docs told me that being in good health helped me live and will help me get better. Still, I am under no illusions that “there by the grace of God go I.” I’m grateful beyond any words on this page to be alive and so thankful for my family and friends who stayed with me, kept in touch with me and who will love me back to health, especially Jack who is at my side. I never asked God, “Why me?” But I did ask, “Why now?” Why, at the beginning of the semester, so front-loaded with contacts with new students, re-grouping and doing leadership development with returning leaders, a time to enjoy the campus coming back to life, did I have to go through this: my life hanging in the balance?

The answer remains to be discovered or may not ever be known. Much goodness and energy has been released as people have taken up  ministry tasks in my absence. Some reading this have heard me say: “Remember, life is fragile, life is precious.” Handle with care, handle with prayer and so I will and I hope you will too. All night, all day, angels watchin’ over me, my Lord. All night, all day, angels watchin’ over. Me.

Love, Pj (aka Pastor Jayne Marie Thompson)