My Next Step (9 page)
As Junior was listening to the doctors’ opinion, Rudy Zupetz, the golf pro from Sanctuary, happened to come by for a visit. It was still early. Junior was lying on the sofa in my room.
“Hey, I brought you some orange juice,” Rudy said to Junior. After hearing about the severity of the situation, Junior looked over at Rudy and said, “What do you think, Rudy?” Of course, he was just yanking his chain.
“I have to go!” Rudy said, as he quickly turned and walked out of the room. He wanted nothing to do with making that kind of decision. Who could blame him?
Naturally, Junior reached out to Gail, his brothers and his sister before agreeing to let the doctors do the procedure. They had a very sophisticated and mature understanding of what was going on and kept it that way.
On the evening of March 7
th
, Dr. Prusmack opened me up for the second time. Mary, Junior and Dr. Barry Molk were there to support me. They’ve told me it was a very scary time for all of them, but they were equally excited because if I came through the surgery without a hitch, it meant I was making progress. Somewhere deep in their hearts, if this surgery went well, then perhaps, magically or by design, I would be cured. They sat in the ICU waiting room sweating bullets for two very long hours.
Gail, Margaret and Adam were at the annual RE/MAX R4 convention in Las Vegas, so they were kept apprised of my condition through emails and phone calls. Since I couldn’t be there to give the opening speech, Gail gave it in my absence. Believe me, I would have much rather been in Las Vegas than in an operating room that day.
Since Dr. Molk was on staff at Sky Ridge, he had access to all areas of the hospital. He was able to monitor the surgery throughout my time on the table. When the doctors finished, he broke the good news to the gang that I had come through the procedure and was comfortably resting in my room.
He said that a significant amount of the infection had been removed from the upper part of my neck. My doctors hoped this was the source of the paralysis on the right side of my upper body, but couldn’t be sure until a little more time had passed.
My lower back showed good progress from the previous surgery, which meant the antibiotics were working. I am sure this news came as a huge relief for everyone there, as they had been sitting on pins and needles, waiting for hours.
Shortly before my second back surgery, Margaret and Gail sat down with the family and explained that we needed to tell the whole company
something
. They didn’t want the false rumors to grow even larger. It just wasn’t fair to anyone to allow suspicions to incubate. I was still too out of it to speak on my own behalf, so they decided that Margaret should make a brief statement to our membership. The statement was to be neither promising nor alarming. They didn’t want to scare anyone because there was the possibility that I would bounce back, but they also didn’t want to make it seem like everything was all right when I was struggling daily to stay alive. My condition was constantly changing. Just when the doctors thought they had one problem under control, another popped up. But the time for the talk had come.
Margaret called a meeting with the three hundred or so people who work at RE/MAX corporate headquarters in Denver to tell them what was going on without going into all of the gory details. She explained that I had some complications from a serious back condition and was in the hospital recuperating from surgery. The news was hard to hear, but no one said a negative word. I got nothing but unconditional love and support.
When visitors arrived, my kids did an excellent job of greeting them. They made everyone feel welcome and appreciated, and yet also shielded me from being seen in such a vulnerable state. I really was a gruesome sight, and a shell of the man the good people of RE/MAX had come to know over the years. My family didn’t want a visitor’s last memory of me to be a decrepit, decaying man in a hospital bed. They wanted my friends and colleagues to think of me strong, healthy and fierce, like a lion. Even though I didn’t get to visit with so many of those who stopped by, I will never forget their desire to be there or their unwavering kindness and support for both my family and me.
I spent the next couple of weeks on heavy-duty antibiotics and slowly began to stabilize. I was still considered critical, but not nearly as critical as I had been in the weeks leading up to the second surgery. Being kept on the critical list had its advantages, though. The biggest one was that I could still receive around-the-clock care. If my condition had been downgraded, I wouldn’t have had the same kind of monitoring.
Dr. Barry Molk continued to come by daily, encouraging me to fight the good fight.
“You’ve got a lot of staph left in you, Dave, which means you’ve got a long road ahead and I need you to be strong. Can you continue to fight for me?” He’d ask this in a very inspiring way that always made me want to say, “Yes.”
A few weeks later, Dr. Molk came by my room around 11:00 at night. He and I had a very good exchange that resulted in me laughing for the first time in months. He left my room feeling “cautiously optimistic” about my recovery—the first real positive sign my family was given that I might actually beat this thing.
While I was recuperating, Junior showed me a bit of the opening session from the RE/MAX convention that had been uploaded to Facebook. I did my best to watch and understand why I couldn’t be there, but it became a bit confusing for me. For a moment, I thought I was at a hospital in Las Vegas and could easily be taken to the convention in my hospital bed. I was clearly disconnected from my reality, but remember being so proud of Gail for staying strong and carrying on without me.
Throughout this experience, I worried about Gail more than myself. Night after night, she went home alone. She ate her dinner by herself, slept in an empty bed and did her best to keep a stiff upper lip. Even though I was still alive, from my perspective she was living the life of a widow, something I never considered before this happened. She inspired me every day in her own recovery, perseverance and determination, and she continued to inspire me now more than ever. For the first time in my life, I understood what it was really like to stand in her place—to face a life that wasn’t the one we had planned with a willingness to adapt as a means to survive.
FROM THE DESK OF MARGARET KELLY
2/27/12
Hello everyone,
I’d like to take a moment to share some news about Dave Liniger.
Here’s what’s happened over the past few weeks. Dave was feeling severe back pain, so he went to the hospital to get it checked. Doctors confirmed a problem in his back and also found a wider-spread infection, which needed to be addressed before anything else was done.
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.
O
n 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.