by Dave Liniger
By last week, things had improved, and Dave received the go-ahead for back surgery to relieve the pain and pressure causing him trouble. Everything went well; his doctors called it a textbook surgery. Although Dave is still in the hospital and has a lot of healing to do, he’s making progress and feeling better.
Until recently, Dave was hopeful about attending R4. He really wanted to be there, but for now he needs to rest, avoid travel and follow doctor’s orders, which is no easy task for him.
We don’t want to overwhelm the Linigers, so please, no cards, calls, emails or flowers; Dave and Gail know how much you care about them and can feel your thoughts and support. If you want to reach out, we’ve created a virtual get-well card on Facebook, where you can express yourself and share a personal message.
R4 is going to be a fantastic event, as strong as ever. Dave expects to hear some great stories from Las Vegas, and we won’t let him down.
I’m looking forward to seeing many of you at R4 next week.
Sincerely,
Margaret Kelly
Chief Executive Officer
RE/MAX World Headquarters
BRUCE BENHAM
I am a positive man by nature but my positivity about Dave’s situation was shattered a lot because of the fluctuation in his condition. I kept hearing about how critical he was and all of the other variables that kept him from getting better faster, which made me scared yet hopeful at the same time. Dr. Prusmack has also been my doctor over the years, so I felt comfortable enough asking him questions about Dave’s illness and prognosis. He told me that Dave was in very serious condition, but it looked as if there was a good chance he’d stabilize. I didn’t know anything about staph infections before Dave got sick. I had no idea how damaging they could be to the human body. Dr. Prusmack told me he was especially worried that Dave might have severe nerve damage from the staph infection. If your nerves are damaged, they’re healable, but they heal a lot slower. So what might cause an injury in minutes can sometimes take months or even years to heal. Dr. Prusmack explained that nerves get angry quickly and they forgive very slowly. I never expected Dave’s staph infection to be so vicious, let alone impact everything else from his kidneys to his lungs. What I did know was that it would take a miracle for Dave to pull through this, and if he were given that chance, it would take time—lots of time.
JOHN
I was in the hospital every day with Dad for the first month. When he had turned the corner and we could start making plans for rehab, I started slowing down—mainly because I was becoming stressed. I am physically strong, but because of the blood-thinning medication I take, it is easy for me to get sick. Sure enough, I started getting ill, which gave me a chance to step out. I let the rest of the family take over. I have the same type-A personality as my dad—it’s the thing that made me such a good pilot. But taking control and making decisions from this point forward was the exact wrong thing to do in this situation. I have a strong mind and I know there are times when I should bow out. I was glad I was there at the critical moments though, and would be there whenever I could going forward.
CHAPTER 7
35 Days of Hell
On March 14, 2012, just eight days after my second surgery, I was stable enough to move from the ICU at Sky Ridge to Craig Hospital, where I would continue my very long and challenging road of healing. I was very ready to get out of the ICU and move forward with my next step toward recovery. My insurance company however, had other plans. They didn’t approve my move to a rehabilitation facility specializing in spinal cord and head trauma injuries because I had neither. It was a tedious battle to finally get my transfer approved, but once we did, I was taken by ambulance, accompanied by Junior while Mary and her husband Jeff followed behind.
By the time I arrived at Craig, I was slowly becoming my old self again in spirit. Of course, my body had a long way to go before it could catch up to where it was. I had lost so much muscle from being in bed for such a long time that I was literally skin and bones. My children gave me leg massages to help get my circulation flowing, but there was nothing there. They said it felt like they could touch the bones right through my paper-thin layer of skin. If I had any hope of rebuilding muscle, I needed to get out of bed and start moving.
On one of my first days at Craig Hospital, a doctor came into my room to tell me the story of Sir Ernest Shackleton. As soon as the name fell from his mouth, Junior and Mary burst out laughing. You see, I’ve been a fan of the great explorer Shackleton for many years. My kids all grew up hearing me tell the story of his heroic Antarctic expeditions, especially what became known as the Imperial Antarctic Expedition from 1914-1917. Shackleton was attempting to cross the continent from sea to sea. His ship, called the Endurance, became trapped in pack ice and was crushed before rescuers could reach him and his team. Shackleton set out to get help and returned two years later to save his crew members, who all survived. As a result of his valiant efforts, he became known for his leadership abilities under the most extreme circumstances.
The doctor stood in my room and said, “Dave, we’re looking at running a marathon together, and today is the first step toward our first mile.”
Of course, I was still paralyzed, so I would need to learn how to walk again before I could enter the race, so to speak. But that wasn’t the real obstacle standing in my way. There was something else that needed to be dealt with before I could even consider beginning my rehabilitation and physical therapy.
The next part of my story isn’t for the squeamish, so if you are the kind of person who gets queasy at the thought of blood, you may want to skip the next few pages. Remember, you’ve been warned!
As a result of being in my hospital bed so long, mostly in a highly drugged state and unable to move, I developed what I now refer to as a world class butt sore. My sore didn’t start on the outside and work its way inside; essentially, it began as an interior wound that burrowed its way through to my outer skin, revealing a tunnel to my tailbone and connective tissue. It started from the staph infection within my body and literally ate away layers of my muscle and skin until it created a giant hole in my back that a fully-grown man could put his fist through. Despite the nurses’ best efforts to turn me every couple of hours, this very large bedsore just above the crack of my derrière had become increasingly infected. Bedsores are injuries to skin and underlying tissues that result from prolonged pressure on one spot. They usually develop in areas on skin that cover bony parts of the body, such as the heel, ankles, hips or buttocks.
Let’s be clear about something. I am a fiercely competitive man. I like to win, and if you happen to beat me, you can bet that I put up a damn good fight. This was one contest, however, I’d rather have been left out of!
The doctors discovered my bedsore while I was at Sky Ridge, but my condition had been so severe, it was actually the least of their worries until they could get my staph infection and other ailments under control. By the time I arrived at Craig Hospital to start my rehabilitation, my bedsore had become one of the worst they’d ever seen. There was no hope that it would heal on its own. A bedsore that makes it to this serious stage often causes extensive destruction, including tissue death, and damage to muscle, bone and supporting structures such as tendons, joints, and the body capsule. The doctors would have to perform flap surgery, which required cutting the skin above my tailbone into three pizza slices, and then pulling them over the open wound to close the gap in my back.
At first, I didn’t want anyone to see the sore. It was nasty-looking and not something one rushes to show off. Nevertheless, doctors and nurses from all over the hospital were stopping by my room to get a peek at my…uh…cheeks because mine was such a severe case. After a while, it got to the point where any time someone stopped by my room, I’d greet them with a hearty, “Hey, want to see my butt sore?”
The doctor who performed the surgery was a well-known plastic surgeon. His technique for closing the wound involved intertwining muscles and blood vessel
s before draping the skin and securing it with stitches. While the surgery was complicated, the recovery would be the worst phase. For the sutures to take and allow the skin to heal, I had to be bedridden again, unable to move even an inch for thirty-five days. The doctors told me that research indicated a much higher failure rate at four weeks than five, so the plan was to keep me still for five full weeks—which took me into the middle of May.
I’d already spent almost seven weeks lying still in a hospital bed at Sky Ridge, and several more weeks at Craig getting ready for my three to four month stay there. I had been fitted for physical therapy equipment and had set up my exercise and physical therapy programs before preparing for this—my third major surgery in two months. Again, they gave me medication for the pain, but this time around, I wasn’t kept in a semi-comatose state for the recovery. As a result, I was painfully aware of every moment of time as it slowly ticked away.
Since the skin they used to cover the hole was extremely thin from pulling it tight, I had to be particularly careful not to bruise, scratch or overstretch my body or I’d risk reopening the wound and the healing process would have to start all over again.
When the surgeon finished the procedure, he was convinced that this was some of the very best work he’d ever done. The nurses came to check my sutures every two hours and invariably they’d say, “Time to roll over and look at your butt, Dave.” It got to the point where all I could do was find humor in the situation, so I’d always respond with a boastful, “Isn’t that the prettiest ass you’ve ever seen?”
“No doubt about it,” they’d say.
Before all of this happened, I had buns of steel—not squishy ones like they are now. But I did whatever I could to make the best of it all.
Other doctors from the hospital and even medical students came by to see me. When they arrived, I’d just laugh and tell them there was a tip jar in the corner. Looks weren’t free. Once a businessman, always a businessman, right?
Wrong!
When nobody put money in the jar, I tried one last attempt to make everyone laugh.
“I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.” That didn’t get me very far either.
Although I was making light of my situation, I was extremely lucky that the surgery was a success. The majority of paraplegics and quadriplegics who die each year die from these very types of sores. When you are paralyzed from the neck or anywhere below, you have no sensation in your body, so you can’t feel the pain from developing sores. Often these patients don’t even know they have sores unless somebody is looking for them. When you don’t have a nurse to turn you every couple of hours, it can and often does become a life-threatening condition.
FROM THE DESK OF MARGARET KELLY
3/30/12
I’d like to update you again on Dave Liniger’s health.
As most of you know, Dave checked into the hospital about eight weeks ago with severe back pain. Doctors determined that his discomfort was due to pressure built up through a severe staph infection.
He has since had two successful back surgeries to reduce the pressure and provide relief from the pain. The first occurred in February and the second in March, during R4. Both went very well.
Dave is still in the hospital and will be on antibiotics for another month or more, which is normal for a staph infection. He has also begun physical therapy, and it will take months for him to regain his strength. He’s receiving the best care possible and his doctors are pleased with his progress.
Dave and Gail feel your love and support. We don’t want to overwhelm Gail and the family while they are focused on Dave’s recovery - so please, no cards, flowers, emails or calls. A virtual get-well card is still on Facebook; you’re more than welcome to add your thoughts there.
Warm regards,
Margaret Kelly
Chief Executive Officer
RE/MAX World Headquarters
LORIEL FIGIEL
I was one of Dave’s day nurses at Craig Hospital. By the time he got to us in March, he’d had quite a long journey.
Not long after he got settled in, Dave began asking all of the right questions.
“What the hell’s been going on for the past two months? Where am I? What happened?” I called that D-day because that was the day the doctor, all of his therapists and the techs were together with Dave’s family in his room for the first time, telling him the story of where he’d been before, where he was at now, and what we were looking forward to doing, with the hope that he’d retain at least some of what we were saying. Dave was still very sick at this point, so we couldn’t start the intake process a patient at Craig usually undergoes—a process that involves us, first and foremost, getting the patient out of bed and moving. Up until D-day, we had been speaking to Dave, but he wasn’t with it enough to keep up with what we were saying. On this particular day, however, Dave awoke and for the first time since he arrived at Craig, was cognitively aware of what was going on around him.
When we told him about the thirty-five days of bed rest, I was worried that he might become confused and maybe try to get out of bed, bend his legs or do something that would jeopardize his recovery from the flap surgery. As it turned out, even in his most confused, upset, terrified moments, he was still the nicest patient I’ve ever taken care of. Granted, I worked with Dave in the daytime, and the nights were when his terror frequently set in. He tried to break free a couple of times, but someone would always talk him off the ledge and help him to understand the damage he could do if he didn’t calm down.
Thirty-five days of bed rest doesn’t do anybody any good mentally or emotionally. A lot of our patients struggle with it. We try to give them something more to do than stare at the ceiling. There’s not a lot of therapy that can happen during that time, so the days have a tendency to run together. Sometimes the day and evening schedule gets flipped, so a patient might sleep all day and then be awake at night. Dave wanted to be on a regular and regimented schedule—one that felt familiar to him. Morning would come and he’d be ready to go for the day. Even though he was flat on his back, he’d always greet me with a hearty hello and the same questions:
“What’s my schedule today? What are we doing?” He looked forward to the therapy session or OT work he did on his arms like he was closing a large business transaction every single day. Dave came into this period with the best attitude, which made a world of difference in his results.
JOHN
I had the idea to put a page-a-day countdown calendar on the wall of Dad’s room as a way of ticking down the time he had left in his thirty-five days of bed rest. We started with 35 and counted down. I thought it would help him pass the time and would serve as a reminder of what day he was on. I also rented every bad Western and Adventure movie I could find at Blockbuster. Dad seemed to enjoy “Man on a Ledge” and “Monte Walsh,” a film starring Tom Selleck. I even got him into watching the Colorado Rockies games with me, but they were losing every night, so it got downright depressing for both of us. Because Dad has never been a big television watcher, we tried getting a special stand for his iPad so he could read while lying down, but that didn’t work either. What really got Dad through this period were his friends and family visiting all the time. When we realized this was giving Dad the support he needed to get through the long stretch of bed rest, we opened the doors to everyone who wanted to come for a visit.
Admittedly, those thirty-five days were tough, but I got through them without breaking. There were moments when I wanted to scratch my feet, but mentally I had given in to doing whatever had to be done. I tried my absolute best to be the happiest person I could be toward the nurses, doctors, therapists and technicians. It wasn’t easy, but the effort alone made a huge difference in my overall disposition. Given where I had been the past several months, I wasn’t going to complain. Instead, I used the time in the most productive ways I could think of. I had Mary write my schedule out on a white dry-erase board every day so I could see it, change, or adjust it if I wan
ted to. I resolved pretty early on that I was going to be the best patient Craig had ever treated. I had always had a lot of stamina and never worried about doing the hard work in life. As I lay in bed, I likened my recovery to two of the greatest lessons I learned very early in my life after reading the book Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill. I was an impressionable sixteen-year-old kid who didn’t want to spend the rest of his life milking cows on our farm in Indiana. That book, which I’ve read more than forty times, has been a tremendous inspiration and influence in everything I have accomplished in business and in life. If you haven’t read it, I strongly encourage you to. And if you have, go back and read it again, because its lessons have held up over time and are as relevant today as they were when the book was first published in 1937. Fifty years after reading that book forty years of having actively exercised its principles, and thirty years of teaching from it brought me to two very simple lessons that have ruled my world. The first lesson is simple: Whatever the mind can conceive and believe, it can achieve. The second lesson is to write down any goal that is worth achieving, make it an obsession and convince your brain that you can accomplish it. Be sure that the goal is realistic, then decide what your step-by-step plan will be to achieve it.
The lessons are really about being persistent, setting realistic goals and finding the right people to encourage you to attain them. As you start working toward your goal, you may have to stop, recalibrate, make adjustments and then get back to working toward that goal. But NEVER, ever give up until you reach it. My first goal while at Craig was to get past those thirty-five days. My friends and family would be my support system to get me through, and my doctors and nurses would make sure I didn’t screw it up.
