Life goes on for family a year after devastation

New dad left paralyzed by infection begins next chapter at home

Katie Kerwin McCrimmon

Published January 7, 2008 at 12:30 a.m.

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Photo by Judy DeHaas © The Rocky

Kathy Slade gives husband Scott Slade a kiss while holding Samantha, one of their twin daughters, last month in their San Diego home. Scott, a Colorado native, was left a quadraplegic in January 2007 after he was stricken by a massive staph infection.

Photo by Judy DeHaas © The Rocky

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The wind blew so hard that night in October that giant palm trees pounded the motel where Scott Slade slept in a makeshift hospital room. His nurse woke him at 3 a.m. The wildfires were coming. She had to get him out.

The night before, the fires scorched land miles away, but now the wild winds had brought flames to Scott's neighborhood. The nurse called 911 over and over. The line was busy. She needed an ambulance. She couldn't move Scott on her own.

The smoky air was poison to a man with severe lung problems who needed a ventilator to gulp every breath.

Just a couple miles away, Scott's wife and twin babies slept in their home. And once again, Scott could not get to them, could do nothing to sweep up his babies and protect them.

Dreams of home had sustained Scott since last January. A native of Durango and a Colorado College graduate, he had been on the fast track, a hotshot marketing guy with a big salary and promising future. But all that changed when, out of the blue, a mysterious bacterial infection invaded his body and migrated to his spinal column.

Last spring, he checked into Craig Hospital in Englewood, hoping to regain use of his arms and legs. He shared his ordeal with the Rocky Mountain News in May. He hoped to walk again by the time his babies took their first steps.

Scott returned to California in October as a quadriplegic, but the troubles didn't stop there. Now it was fire.

The nurse finally reached a 911 operator. As paramedics wheeled Scott outside, hot ash stung his forehead. Flames flickered on the hillsides around him. His hands lay at his side, useless to wipe away the ash. Instead of taking him home, the paramedics drove Scott to a hospital.

After nearly a year of suffering what felt like the biblical trials of Job, Scott wondered if he would ever get home, ever experience the joys of being a new dad and laugh so hard with his wife that tears streamed down their cheeks.

He wondered if he would ever reclaim his life.

Countdown to girls' birth

Over the holiday season a year ago, before the nightmare began, Scott and Kathy Slade had a new focus in their lives: Their first babies were due in early February.

Kathy was convinced that her twins would be boys. So, she and Scott painted the room blue. But first one ultrasound, then another a month later, revealed that each "boy" kicking around in Kathy's belly was actually a girl.

Christmas was a special time for the couple. On Christmas Day in 2002, Scott sneaked an engagement ring into the Mickey and Minnie Mouse sleigh that Kathy always placed beneath her tree.

That morning, Kathy was antsy to get to her parents' house. "Wait," Scott said. "It looks like Mickey and Minnie have a present for you."

Kathy opened the package and started crying as Scott recited a silly poem. The two had been commuting for dates between San Diego, where she lived, and Los Angeles, where he had a home on the beach.

"Roses are red. Violets are blue. I'm sick of driving. I bet you are too," Scott said, then finished with: "Roses are red. Violets are blue. I'll be the happiest man on earth if you say, 'I do.' "

Scott and Kathy were married in October 2003 and held their reception at the spectacular Torrey Pines Golf Course perched over the Pacific in San Diego. It was perfect. They both loved the beach and Scott was a golf fanatic.

In fact, Scott blamed golf for a gnawing backache that became especially painful on Christmas Day 2006. He could barely bend over to pick up presents.

"Honey, you better see the doctor," said Kathy, who wasn't feeling perfect herself. Thirty-four weeks pregnant with two babies, she felt tired and swollen.

Scott took her advice. The doctor scheduled an MRI right after New Year's. On Jan. 2, as Scott dressed for his appointment, Kathy heard a loud crash. She raced in and found her husband on the floor. Unable to lift him, she called 911.

Paramedics took him to the closest hospital. The news was devastating. A bacterial infection had taken over the entire lower half of Scott's body. The culprit was common staph bacteria, which usually live harmlessly on skin. The staph bacteria may have migrated into Scott's body through a tiny cut caused by eczema, doctors said. Now the bacteria had multiplied to the point that he would need powerful antibiotics to survive.

"You might want to say goodnight to him" one doctor told Kathy before she left to get some sleep. "He might not make it through the night."

Stressed over Scott's precarious condition, Kathy went into premature labor. Doctors gave her medication to stop it. She tried to rest and stay calm. But by the night of Jan. 3, it was clear that the babies were coming.

While Scott fought for his life at one hospital, Kathy wept as she gave birth to their babies in another.

Samantha Elaine arrived at 2:41 a.m. Stephanie Kathleen followed at 2:55 a.m. They weighed a little more than 4 pounds each. Samantha was healthy, but Stephanie's lungs were not fully developed. She needed help breathing, growing and building strength. Steph- anie spent 12 days in the neonatal ICU.

Kathy darted between the two hospitals, visiting Stephanie at one and praying for Scott's survival at the other. As soon as she could, she told her husband their good news.

"Honey we had the babies," she said.

He couldn't talk. A ventilator tube filled his mouth.

"Squeeze my hand if you understand," Kathy told him.

He squeezed.

It was the last time Kathy felt him touch her.

That night, Scott stopped breathing. Doctors resuscitated him. A couple days later, when the doctors thought he could breathe on his own, they removed his ventilator. Somehow, the staph infection had raced up his spinal column. Scott became paralyzed to his chin.

At 43 and in robust health weeks before, Scott Slade could no longer breathe, eat, move or hug his wife. He had never held his baby girls.

Priest helped face anger

The nightmares started almost immediately. Powerful narcotics played evil tricks on Scott's mind.

Shipwrecks kept haunting him. Water lapped at his chin, much like his paralysis.

"Pictures of the girls would somehow always be with me. One time, I put their photo in a Ziploc bag. The ship was sinking. Somehow, I ended up at an island with just a tree and their photo.

"That photo meant so much to me. It meant that I was alive and that I had something to live for."

As Scott's paralysis dragged on, Kathy sought solace at San Raphael Catholic Church in San Diego.

In hushed conversations with her priest, she could reveal her darkest fears. She prayed that Scott's spinal column was just in shock, that the paralysis was temporary. But, she knew it was unlikely he would ever move again. She confessed that she was angry, that she didn't sign on to be a single parent.

"I had to give birth to these babies by myself. They were preemies and wouldn't eat. I'm a new mom. I'm supposed to be doing this with Scott."

Scott moved from the hospital to a care center in San Diego where he ended up with a severe bed sore. He also was suffering the ultimate torture: His arms and legs were useless to him, but he could feel them. His limbs felt like they were on fire.

Kathy cried with Father Dennis. She wondered if Scott would have been better off had the infection claimed his life.

"I don't want him to be in pain and suffer. Of course, I want him to be here with us."

Father Dennis helped her channel her sorrow and anger.

"It's OK to get mad at God. God can take it," he said.

Meanwhile, Kathy had the twins to care for. She moved in with her parents for several months. Then, during the summer, she decided she had to manage on her own and returned to the couple's two-story stucco home.

She and Scott had been fortunate. He had bought his beach house in L.A. at the bottom of the market and sold it for a good price. In their neighborhood, dubbed 4-S Ranch for the rural property that once spanned these hills north of San Diego, they were able to buy a lovely three-bedroom home with vaulted ceilings. They added a patio with a fireplace and a shiny grill for Scott, who loved cooking exotic dishes inspired by years of world travel.

Coming to terms

Without Scott, though, the grill sat unopened. These days, Kathy was lucky if she got a bowl of corn flakes for dinner.

Samantha was not a great sleeper. In the middle of the night, Kathy rocked her, pondered Scott's condition and wept with her baby.

"Slowly, I learned to accept it," Kathy said.

By May, Kathy and Scott knew they needed to learn more about how Scott could live with his paralysis. He wanted to be in San Diego, but the premier rehabilitation center in the country for patients with spinal injuries was in Scott's native Colorado. He braced for the distance he would be from his family and headed to Craig Hospital for a five-month stay.

Scott soon became one of the most popular patients at Craig. Even paralyzed, he entertained his nurses and therapists, cutting his grief with humor.

Scott had practice making light of his troubles. Raised on a ranch outside Durango, Scott excelled at school and sports. But, at age 11, his hair started falling out. Doctors diagnosed him with alopecia areata, a condition that prevented him from keeping hair on his body. Instead of withdrawing from friends, Scott sharpened his wit. He won his bid for seventh-grade class president, telling classmates to vote for "Kojak Slade."

At Craig, Scott had to find satisfaction in tiny accomplishments. When he learned to use his wheelchair by sipping and puffing into a straw to move, he joked about his pace.

"I don't move as fast as I did in my BMW 528i, but I get down the road."

Pictures of Kathy, Sam and Steph filled his room. Nurses pasted them to the ceiling and to his bed. Kathy came to visit as often as she could, but to support the family and keep their precious health insurance she had to hold on to her full-time job as an electrical engineer for Cricket Communications.

Every bill, however, brought them closer to their $2 million coverage cap and impending financial ruin.

Scott convinced himself that if he could just get back home, all would be well. The nurses set up his computer so he could watch his girls on a Web cam.

One night, one of Kathy's brothers started the Web cam early and Scott got to see his girls react when Kathy came home from work.

"Hello girls. How are you?" Kathy called out as she came in the door. The twins squealed with delight, waved their arms and smiled.

"They were laughing and you could see that Kathy was so happy to be a mother," Scott said. "It was amazing. As much as they were happy to see Mom, she was equally happy to see them. I think, at that moment, I knew that Kathy and I would be OK."

Return home postponed

On Oct. 9, Scott thought he was finally going to leave Craig and make it home, but more detours lay in his path.

Months earlier, Kathy had hired a contractor to install a lift from their main floor to the second floor, where Scott would take over the master bedroom.

But the day before Scott was to arrive home, the contractor found mold - and an actual mushroom - in the bathroom that he was renovating for Scott. The lift wasn't working either.

Because the mold could be a danger to Scott's lungs, Kathy had to arrange for him to stay in a nearby motel and had to hire round-the- clock nurses.

Just when workers had removed the mold and declared the home safe, massive wildfires galloped across the San Diego region. That's when Scott was taken to the hospital where Kathy had given birth to their babies 10 months earlier.

Twice while in the hospital, Scott suffered a "code blue." Nurses couldn't detect his pulse for more than 30 seconds.

Scott survived and came to view his post-fire hospital stay as a blessing, not a setback.

"All I wanted was to be home. But being in that hospital probably saved my life."

For months, Kathy had postponed the girls' baptism, waiting until Scott was home to celebrate with them. The ceremony was scheduled for Nov. 11, but Scott was still in the hospital.

The girls were already 11 months old. Kathy consulted her priest and Scott's doctors and came up with a new solution: They would hold the baptism in the hospital chapel.

About 40 relatives stood in a circle around Scott, Kathy and their babies.

Part of big event

Scott was finally at the center of that circle and at the center of his family.

"It was the first major event of their lives that I had seen. They were born two days after I went into the hospital. I had taken all of the classes, learning to breathe and helping to manage the birth. Then, of course, I wasn't there."

The baptism marked a turning point for Scott. One week later, after an odyssey of more than 300 days, thousands of miles and countless heartbreaks, Scott finally returned home.

Had Scott created a comedy sketch about his homecoming, he could not have come up with a zanier tale than the truth.

Exhausted, he wanted to get settled in his bed upstairs. The paramedics placed him on the lift. Then, with Scott dangling halfway between the first and second floors, the lift broke down. The paramedics manually lowered him and carried his 170-pound, 5-foot-10 frame up the stairs.

Scott cracked jokes, but being carried up his own stairs was yet another indignity in a year that had stripped him of much of his pride.

Scott soon learned that his dreams of being home differed from reality. His twins lived much of their lives a floor below him. Kathy moved at a fast pace to keep up with her full-time job and two babies.

Soon after Scott's return, the contractor and nanny got into a fight and both threatened to leave. Kathy felt herself melting down as everyone turned to her for answers.

"Oh my God," she thought to herself. "This is never going to go away. This is going to last forever."

Scott, meanwhile, hardly felt at home. His office, where he once wielded his marketing expertise, had morphed into a nursing station for $10,000-a- month, round-the-clock caregivers. His desk sat in the garage.

In the second-floor master bedroom, which he could no longer share with Kathy, a table brimmed with medicine, and his hospital bed and breathing equipment filled the room.

His nurses had to attend to all his needs: feeding, bathing and dressing him and keeping his lungs clear so the ventilator could force air in and out. The rhythmic sighs of the machine cruelly mimicked the Pacific waves that Scott once enjoyed while barbecuing at his beach house.

Now, that carefree life seemed so far away. If the ventilator alarm sounded, Scott had to worry that perhaps he had taken his last breath.

On Thanksgiving, Scott heard the hubbub downstairs as Kathy, the girls and family members gathered. The old Scott would have whipped up a new dish or two to dazzle everyone.

Now, "I was just praying that the lift would get me down to the first floor so I could eat with the rest of my family."

Scott made it to dinner that night and other nights. There were moments of elation. One evening the girls wrestled over a pillow, then played peek-a-boo with each other, sneaking glances around a couch. Their giggles spread to Scott and Kathy.

But other times, Scott's inability to hug his babies cut sharper than the fiery pain in his limbs that still plagued him every day.

At dinner, Stephanie and Samantha sat in high chairs sampling carrots and sweet potatoes. Once the chef who created meals for his family, Scott now sat in a high-tech wheelchair a few feet away from his babies, waiting for someone to feed him.

Alone in the middle of the night, Scott's losses swept over him.

"I really hadn't prepared myself for any type of acceptance of the physical changes that would involve my family," Scott said. "The girls are such an enrichment to my life, it's amazing. When they laugh and giggle, it's the funniest thing you've every heard.

"But being home means you see two sides of everything - what you could do before and what your limitations are now. I can't just get down and roll around with them and play with them. And I also can't pick them up when they're crying and just need some general loving," he said. "You feel like there's this loss of value."

As a ventilator-dependent quadriplegic, like Christopher Reeve, Scott knew death could claim him any day. Now that he had achieved his goal of reaching home, he had to cement his desire to live.

Goals were in order

During this season of new beginnings, he had to set some goals: weaning himself from the ventilator, relishing every milestone with the girls and finding ways to make himself feel whole again. The nurses at Craig wanted him to write a cookbook. Perhaps he would work again.

"I'm here," he said. "I need to accept what has happened to me. I need to catch up a bit as far as getting used to the changes that have happened here in this house where I used to live and where I now live again."

A couple weeks ago, as he prepared for Christmas, Scott hatched a plan with one of his caregivers to perform a seemingly simple act: He surprised Kathy with dinner.

Scott created the menu and his nurse did the shopping and preparation. Together they cooked what Scott considered a basic dish: halibut in a tangy Veracruz sauce with olives, capers, tomatoes, carrots and onions.

Cooking was an act of love for Kathy. As he and his wife enjoyed a warm dinner, Scott reclaimed a bit of his life and his place in his family.

Stephanie and Samantha had no idea how much their parents had suffered since their birth a year ago. Month by month, as the girls reached each new milestone, they brought joy to their parents and helped Scott and Kathy to keep going.

"Thank God for the girls. They are my little angels," Kathy said.

Scott knew that without a medical miracle, his own chances of walking were slim. For now, he would relish the sight of his girls learning to walk.

Samantha was ready first. One afternoon, she grabbed a rolling medical tray in Scott's room, rose to her feet and pushed it around. She turned and waved, saying, "Bye-bye, Da-da." Kathy touched her husband's hand.

Then Kathy dipped Stephanie to Scott's face for a kiss. He savored the incredible softness of her skin against his cheeks.

The journey of the past year had stolen part of Scott's identity. But, it had left him with a rare gift.

"I learned to experience how many people really do have a deep, deep love for me and are willing to sacrifice part of their life for me," Scott said. "A lot of times, that doesn't happen when you're alive."

mccrimmonk@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-2502

* For more information on Scott Slade or to donate to the Slade family, go to www.scottbslade.com.

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Comments

January 7, 2008

9:37 a.m.

Suggest removal

candigrl writes:

I admire the tenacity and support given to Scott by his family. My husband suffered some of the same devastation from an hospital acquired staph infection. The key to my husband's recovery is that love and support.
My husband rode his road bicycle 200-500 miles each week, was a successful software engineer with a top secret clearance. He was able to support two families, and we had just been married 18 months. Then he went into the hospital to repair a small birth defect in his heart. He came home seemingly fine, then he began to detriorate, 5 days later I found him slumped in the recliner unable to speak. He was having a stroke, caused by a staph infection that had vegetated on his heart and polluted his blood stream. Part of the vegetation had broken off and traveld to his brain, causing a stroke. Complications of the stroke are the amputation of both legs, several open heart surgeries, the amputation of five fingers, the removal of calcium deposits from his hip, rendering him unable to walk, because of no muscle control, the loss of hearing in one ear, and slight paralyzation on his right side.
They told me he's never be more than a 5 year old mentally. I told them "you don't get to make that decision"
After 5 months in the hospital and 4 months at Craig Rehabilitation Hospital, my husband came home as a 128 pound infant. It was tough going for awhile, but I knew his spirit and our love would pull him through. Thanks to the friends who stuck by us, family who sacrificed, our church community and lots of prayers 5 years and 25 surgeries later, my husband is 95% back to where he was. Although he is confined to a wheelchair, he is mentally sharp,active,and healthy.
We have the good folks at Craig Hospital for their ongoing support, advice and advocacy. Keep loving and supporting Scott, you and he will only benefit from that support!

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Life goes on for family a year after devastation

New dad left paralyzed by infection begins next chapter at home

Katie Kerwin McCrimmon

Published January 7, 2008 at 12:30 a.m.

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