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Fighting a Rare and Deadly Disease
I hold a special place in my close-knit Italian family. At 42, I'm the baby brother of three older sisters. My folks retired to Maine more than 20 years ago, and two of my sisters followed them. Since then, all of us get together with our families each year after Christmas Day. My wife, Donna, and I drive up and rent a big hotel suite in the coastal community of South Portland, where about 20 of us have dinner and usher in the New Year.On December 31, 2004, after dinner, we were swimming in the indoor pool, just fooling around, playing hide-and-seek and having fun. At midnight, we gathered around the TV to watch the ball drop, kissed and hugged, and said goodbye to those who were leaving. Donna and I were exhausted after we got the kids to bed. Nine-year-old Michael and six-year-old Jenna had made the trip (12-year-old Kaelyn lives in Georgia with her mom). I think we fell asleep the minute we hit our pillows.
But I awoke just after 2 a.m. with what seemed like a nasty case of the flu. I had an excruciating headache and terrible chills. My body was shaking so violently that I was literally bouncing on the bed. Overcome by nausea, I spent the early-morning hours dragging back and forth to and from the bathroom.
We decided to cut our holiday short and head home to Smithtown, Long Island. Donna called my mom and dad to let them know that we were all leaving.
Donna loaded our bags into the SUV and got in the driver's seat while I sat next to her, knuckling down for the seven-hour trip. Michael, Jenna and our dog, Chip, a King Charles spaniel, were in the backseat. At one point, I threw up into a plastic bag. I knew it was horrifying for Donna and the kids to see me so sick and weak. I was an avid runner and athlete who prided himself in being strong and physically fit.
By the time we made it home, at around five that evening, I was barely able to drag myself upstairs to bed. It never occurred to us to go to a hospital, because we were so sure this was only the flu.
At about 2 a.m. on January 2, I woke up and headed for the bathroom. Donna must have been sleeping with one eye open. When I returned to bed, she turned a light on and was shocked to see deep purple blotches that looked like broken blood vessels all over my face. She quickly threw on some clothes and phoned her older brother to ask if he could stay with the kids. Soon I wasn't able to stand on my own, so my strong-willed five-foot-four wife heaped my 200-pound body on her back with strength even she didn't know she possessed and, like a firefighter, got me downstairs and into the car. We sped off to a local hospital.
Soon after we arrived, the ER staff tried hooking me up to IVs, but my veins kept collapsing and the staff couldn't insert the needles. My heartbeat and respiration were extremely rapid. A specialist was called to put in a central IV for antibiotics and fluids. The doctors didn't know what was wrong, but they wondered if I'd developed a pulmonary embolism as a result of the long car trip.
More specialists were called in around 4 a.m. as Donna and several nurses circled around, trying to make me more comfortable. Later that morning, I had a CAT scan, to look for an embolism, and a VQ scan, which shows whether blood is circulating freely through the lungs. The results of both were negative, but an echocardiogram showed some weakening of my heart. Suddenly I went into severe septic shock with multiple organ failure: My liver, kidneys and other organs were shutting down. Donna followed as I was wheeled into the ICU.
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