by Don Piper
Because of many bruises and the severity of my obvious wounds, my doctors hardly knew where to start. Other less serious problems became obvious weeks later. Several years passed before they discovered a fractured pelvis that they had missed initially.
I lay on my bed with needles everywhere, unable to move, dependent on the life-support apparatus. I could barely see over the top of my oxygen mask. During most of those days in the ICU, I was in and out of consciousness. Sometimes I’d wake up and see people standing in front of my bed and would wonder, Am I really here or am I just imagining this?
Monitors surrounded me, and a pulse oximeter on my finger tracked my oxygen level. Because I wasn’t getting enough oxygen, the alarm went off often, bringing nurses racing into my room.
The ICU in Hermann is near the helipad; helicopters took off and landed at all hours of the day. When I was awake, I felt as if I were in a Vietnam movie. There were no clocks in the room, so I had no concept of time.
Other people lay in beds near me, often separated by nothing more than a curtain. More than once I awakened and saw orderlies carrying out a stretcher with a sheet over the body. As a pastor, I knew that many people don’t leave the ICU alive.
Am I next? I’d ask myself.
Although I asked the question, the pain prevented my caring. I just wanted not to hurt, and dying would be a quick answer.
I had experienced heaven, returned to earth, and then suffered through the closest thing to hell on earth I ever want to face. It would be a long time before my condition or my attitude changed.
Nightmarish sounds filled the days and the nights. Moans, groans, yells, and screams frequently disrupted my rest and jerked me to consciousness. A nurse would come to my bed and ask, “Can I help you?”
“What are you talking about?” I’d ask. Sometimes I’d just stare at her, unable to understand why she was asking.
“You sounded like you’re in great pain.”
I am, I’d think, and then I’d ask, “How would you know that?”
“You cried out.”
That’s when I realized that sometimes the screams I heard came from me. Those groans or yells erupted when I did something as simple as trying to move my hand or my leg. Living in the ICU was horrible. They were doing the best they could, but the pain never let up.
“God, is this what I came back for?” I cried out many times. “You brought me back to earth for this?”
My condition continued to deteriorate. I had to lie flat on my back because of the missing bone in my left leg. (They never found the bone. Apparently, it was ejected from the car into the lake when my leg was crushed between the car seat and dash-board.) Because of having to lie flat, my lungs filled with fluid. Still not realizing my lungs were collapsed, nurses and respiratory therapists tried to force me to breathe into a large plastic breathing device called a spirometer to improve my lung capacity.
On my sixth day, I was so near death that the hospital called my family to come to see me. I had developed double pneumonia, and they didn’t think I would make it through the night.
I had survived the injuries; now I was dying of pneumonia.
My doctor talked to Eva.
“We’re going to have to do something,” he told her. “We’re either going to have to remove the leg or do something else drastic.”
“How drastic?”
“If we don’t do something, your husband won’t be alive in the morning.”
That’s when the miracle of prayer really began to work. Hundreds of people had been praying for me since they learned of the accident, and I knew that. Yet, at that point, nothing had seemed to make any difference.
Eva called my best friend, David Gentiles, a pastor in San Antonio. “Please, come and see Don. He needs you,” she said.
Without any hesitation, my friend canceled everything and jumped into his car. He drove nearly two hundred miles to see me. The nursing staff allowed him into my room in ICU for only five minutes.
Those minutes changed my life.
I never made this decision consciously, but as I lay there with little hope of recovery—no one had suggested I’d ever be normal again—I didn’t want to live. Not only did I face the ordeal of never-lessening pain but I had been to heaven. I wanted to return to that glorious place of perfection. “Take me back, God,” I prayed, “please take me back.”
Memories filled my mind, and I yearned to stand at that gate once again. “Please, God.”
God’s answer to that prayer was “no.”
When David entered my room, I was disoriented from the pain and the medication. I was so out of it that first I had to establish in my mind that he was real. Am I hallucinating this? I asked myself.
Just then, David took my fingers, and I felt his touch. Yes, he was real.
He clasped my fingers because that was all he could hold. I had so many IVs that my veins had collapsed; I had a trunk line that went into my chest and directly to my heart. I used to think of my many IVs as soldiers lined up. I even had IVs in the veins in the tops of my feet. I could look down and see them and realize they’d put needles in my feet because there was no place left on my body.
“You’re going to make it,” David said. “You have to make it. You’ve made it this far.”
“I don’t have to make it. I’m not sure . . . I . . . I don’t know if I want to make it.”
“You have to. If not for yourself, then hold on for us.”
“I’m out of gas,” I said. “I’ve done all I can. I’ve given it all I can. I don’t have anything else to give.” I paused and took several breaths, because even to say two sentences sapped an immense amount of energy.
“You have to make it. We won’t let you go.”
“If I make it, it’ll be because all of you want it. I don’t want it. I’m tired. I’ve fought all I can and I’m ready to die.”
“Well, then you won’t have to do a thing. We’ll do it for you.”
Uncomprehending, I stared at the intensity on his face.
“We won’t let you die. You understand that, Don? We won’t let you give up.”
“Just let me go—”
“No. You’re going to live. Do you hear that? You’re going to live. We won’t let you die.”
“If I live,” I finally said, “it’ll be because you want me to.”
“We’re going to pray,” he said. Of course, I knew people had been praying already, but he added, “We’re going to pray all night. I’m going to call everybody I know who can pray. I want you to know that those of us who care for you are going to stay up all night in prayer for you.”
“Okay.”
“We’re going to do this for you, Don. You don’t have to do anything.”
I really didn’t care whether they prayed or not. I hurt too badly; I didn’t want to live.
“We’re taking over from here. You don’t have to do a thing—not a thing—to survive. All you have to do is just lie there and let it happen. We’re going to pray you through this.”
He spoke quietly to me for what was probably a minute or two. I don’t think I said anything more. The pain intensified—if that was possible—and I couldn’t focus on anything else he said.
“We’re going to take care of this.” David kissed me on the forehead and left.
An all-night prayer vigil ensued. That vigil marked a turning point in my treatment and another series of miracles.
The pneumonia was gone the next day. They prayed it away. And the medical staff discovered the error with the breathing tube.
On that seventh day, in another long surgery, Dr. Greider installed the Ilizarov device so that I could sit up and receive
Don wearing the Ilizarov bone growth device.
breathing treatments. They also deflated my stomach, which allowed my lungs to inflate.
Normally, hospitals require six months of counseling before they will authorize the use of the Ilizarov frame. In my case, the medical staff could give Eva no guarantee tha
t the experimental procedure would work. They also told her that using the Ilizarov frame would cause me considerable physical pain as well as extraordinary emotional and psychological distress. Worse, they warned that even after going through all of that, I might still lose my leg.
“This is extremely painful and takes months—maybe years—to recover,” the surgeon said to Eva. Again he reminded her of the worst that could happen—that I might still lose the leg. “However, if we don’t go this route, we have no choice but to amputate.”
He quietly explained that if they amputated they would fit me with a prosthesis, and I’d have to learn to walk with it.
Eva had no illusions about the extent of my injury or how long I would have to endure excruciating pain. She debated the pros and cons for several minutes and prayed silently for guidance. “I’ll sign the consent form,” she finally said.
The next morning, when I awakened after another twelve hours of surgery, I stared at what looked like a huge bulge under the covers where my left leg had been. When I uncovered myself, what I saw took my breath away. On my left leg was a massive stainless steel halo from my hip to just below my knee. A nurse came in and started moving around, doing things around my leg, but I wasn’t sure what she did.
I became aware of Eva sitting next to my bed. “What is that?” I asked. “What’s she doing?”
“We need to talk about it,” she said. “It’s what I agreed to yesterday. It’s a bone-growth device. We call it a fixator. It’s the only chance for the doctors to save your left leg,” she said. “I believe it’s worth the risk.”
I’m not sure I even responded. What was there to say? She had made the best decision she could and had been forced to make it alone.
Just then, I spotted wires leading from the device. “Are those wires going through my leg?”
“Yes.”
I shook my head uncomprehendingly. “They’re going through my leg?”
“It’s a new technique. They’re trying to save your leg.”
I didn’t know enough to comment. I nodded and tried to relax.
“I believe it will work,” she said.
I hoped she was right. Little did I know that nearly a year later I would still be staring at it.
7
DECISIONS AND
CHALENGES
Can anyone ever separate us from Christ’s love? Does it mean he no longer loves us if we have trouble or calamity, or are persecuted, or are hungry or cold or in danger or threatened with death? (Even the Scriptures say, “For your sake we are being killed every day; we are being slaughtered like sheep.”)
ROMANS 8:35–36
One of the most difficult things for me—aside from my own physical pain—was to see the reaction of my family members and close friends. My parents live in Louisiana, about 250 miles from Houston, but they arrived the day after my first surgery. My mother is a strong woman, and I always thought she could handle anything. But she walked into the ICU, stared at me, and then crumpled in a faint. Dad had to grab her and carry her out.
Her collapse made me aware of how pitiful I looked.
Most of those first days remain a blur to me. I wasn’t sure if people really visited me or if I only hallucinated—and from what Eva and the nurses told me, I sometimes was delirious.
The hospital allowed visitors to come in each day, a few at a time. Even when they said nothing, their sad, pitying eyes made it clear to me how they felt. I write clear to me because I know how I perceived them. In retrospect, I may have been mistaken. I suspect I was so positive I would die—and I wanted to—that I saw in their eyes what I was feeling about myself.
Accurate or not, I felt as if they were staring at a mangled body and not a living person, that despite the assuring and comforting words they spoke, they expected me to die at any moment. I wondered if they had come to pay their last respects before I closed my eyes forever.
Though my pneumonia was gone, we still had to treat its aftermath. Nurses came in every four hours for respiratory therapy treatments. They beat on my chest and forced me to breathe through a plastic mouthpiece an awful-smelling, terrible-tasting stuff that was supposed to coat my lungs. This treatment would prevent the pneumonia from recurring and help restore my lungs. I’d wake up and see people coming in, and I’d think, Oh no, here we go. They’re going to make me breathe that stuff and pound on me and try to get the phlegm dislodged. As painful as they were, the treatments worked. Dr. Houchins, the head of the Hermann trauma team, came in several times a day. What Dr. Houchins may have lacked in bedside manner, he made up in sheer bulldog determination not to lose any of his patients.
He demanded that I breathe. “Don’t quit now. Don’t quit. Keep trying.” It wasn’t just the words he spoke, but—as sick as I was—I felt as if he fought right alongside me. “Don’t give up. Keep trying.”
Often I didn’t have the energy to breathe and just stopped trying.
I saw the pained expression on his face and then watched his features contort into an angry intensity. “Did you hear what I said? Do it! Now! Breathe and cough! Do it.”
I shook my head. I just didn’t have the strength to do anything more.
“This is not negotiable. Do this right now! Breathe!”
“I can’t.”
“All right, don’t do it. You’re dead. You’re going to die if you don’t do it. Can you get that into your mind?”
I didn’t want to live, but something happened when he yelled at me.
I breathed.
Shortly after that, the staff figured out how to elevate my leg so I could sit up. Just to sit up was a great step forward. I didn’t think I’d ever get to lie on my side or stomach again.
Once while I was still in the ICU, it seemed as if every time I opened my eyes and blinked, within seconds someone thrust a spoon filled with food about six inches from my mouth.
“Just open up.”
One time it was a man’s voice.
I opened my eyes and stared. Holding the spoon was a burly man. He lifted my oxygen mask and gently poked the spoon into my mouth. “That’s it, just take a bite.”
I obeyed and swallowed while my drugged mind tried to figure out what was going on.
Slowly I realized that the voice belonged to Stan Mauldin, head football coach and athletic director of the Alvin High School Yellow Jackets. Our daughter would live with Stan and Suzan and their two children during my convalescence. Coach Mauldin had heard that because I wouldn’t eat, I was losing weight at an alarming rate. (Although I had lost only a few pounds then, within my first six weeks in the hospital I lost nearly fifty pounds.)
As soon as Stan heard about the situation, he made time in his demanding schedule to show up at Hermann Hospital. He didn’t just drop in to visit. He asked the nurses to give him my food, and he sat beside my bed until I awakened.
As soon as he realized I was fully awake, Stan shoveled in the food and talked while I did my best to chew and listen. That gentle act of sacrifice by a bear of a man was one of the most thoughtful acts I witnessed during my days of recovery. Stan epitomizes strength and tenderness combined in one exceptional person.
I’ve referred to the Ilizarov frame, which may have sounded like a common procedure. It was far from that. Eva had to make a decision no one should have to make alone. She had to decide whether to allow the then-experimental Ilizarov process.
Initially this device was used to stretch legs. Its invention came about to help individuals who have a congenital condition where one leg is shorter than the other—some as much as twelve inches—and have to rely on wheelchairs, calipers, or crutches. The Ilizarov frame forces the bone in the leg to grow while keeping the surrounding tissue intact. The body can form new bone between gaps in response to the mechanical force of the Ilizarov frame.
The Ilizarov bone growth device is what they call an external fixator. A Siberian doctor named Ilizarov invented it.
Dr. Ilizarov experimented on sheep to develop a way to grow miss
ing bones or lengthen congenitally short bones. For missing bone cases like mine, the application involves breaking a limb with a clean break. Wires about the size of piano wire are placed through the skin and bone, and they exit out the other side.
The femur Ilizarov device is anchored in the hip by rods about the size of pencils. The doctors drilled holes for four large rods from my groin to the side of my left hip. After they did that, I had at least thirty holes in my left leg. Many of them went completely through my leg and out the other side. The larger ones just went into the flesh, and rods were embedded in the pelvis. After about six months passed, I could actually see down inside my leg as the pinholes stretched out.
Every day someone would come in and turn the screws on the Ilizarov device to stretch the bones. Most of the time the nursing staff took on this task. After I came home, Eva did it. For nearly a year, my left femur bone would regrow and replace the missing piece. It’s an ingenious device, although terribly painful, requiring an arduous, lengthy recovery. I called it “hideously wonderful. ”
Six rods also went through the top of my left arm and came out the other side. Big stainless steel bars were placed above and below the arm to stabilize it, because both forearm bones were missing. The rods were the size of a pencil and allowed Dr. Greider to harvest bones from my right pelvis and place them in my left forearm. The doctor explained that this was like taking core samples when drilling an oil well. They also harvested about thirty-two square inches of skin from my right leg to place over the enormous wound in my left arm. Then they embedded a Teflon strip between the newly constructed bones in my forearm in order to prevent the new bones from adhering to each other—that is, attaching themselves and growing together.
