Moving Forward in Reverse (14 page)

At nine a.m. on the week of finals, I gritted my teeth, squared my
shoulders and prepared to meet the Army Reserve Colonel and current Director of
Housing at UW-Eau Claire.

Chuck had a great mustache. Thick and white, it spread across his
upper lip in a nice, even line. The bald crown of his head reflected the light
in his office and his wide, clear-framed glasses magnified his eyes ever so
slightly.

Chuck’s office boasted floor-to-ceiling bookshelves along one
wall, a solitary painting on the opposite wall, and two wooden-framed chairs in
front of his expansive desk.

When I came in, he stood to greet me and we exchanged ‘Good
morning’s’. I took a seat in one of the chairs and settled in for the news
which had brought me here.

‘I respect what you’ve gone through, Scott,’ he began. I
acknowledged his comment with an appreciative nod, but stayed silent. More was
coming and, knowing Chuck, I had a good idea it was going to be in the form of
a question rather than a statement.

I had no problem with Chuck. I coached his oldest son and his wife
was an active parent in the team. He ran a tight department and I respected
that as well. The fact that he was about to disrupt my fragile peace of mind
didn’t change my opinion of him as a man. It was inevitable.

‘Do you believe that you are providing the time needed to perform
your Housing duties appropriately?’

That was it: he lay the weight of what we both knew to be the root
cause of my summons on my shoulders with expert care. I knew the answer. I also
liked to believe that Chuck respected me, too, and knew I would speak
truthfully

‘No, sir,’ I said, feeling like one of the Privates who must have
sat opposite this same man in prior years and been asked their own difficult
questions. I didn’t tack on a ‘but’ or try to come to my defense on the matter.
There was nothing else to say. I had been overwhelmingly playing favorites
among my two roles, with the soccer program taking priority by far and wide.
This meeting was my doing and I was prepared for what was to come.

Chuck nodded slowly, then leaned onto his elbows and said, ‘I’ll
keep you through the end of the academic year and offer you a contract for the
summer.’

I gazed at him a little incredulously. He didn’t have to give me a
job over the summer. Of course, without it I would have had nothing.

‘Thank you for the offer,’ I said, then stood and held out the
right myo. As we shook hands I looked him in the eye, hoping he could glimpse
the depths of my gratitude and the sincere esteem I had for him as a man and a
boss. After replacing the chair in its original position, I left for the Soccer
Office.

16

No matter how many times I recalculated, the numbers wouldn’t
budge. Marilyn Skrivseth, the Athletic Director who hired me almost two years
before, had said that I would receive a modest increase in my pay from coaching
to help compensate for the loss of the Housing contract. It wouldn’t be enough
to fully make up the difference, she admitted, but it would be something.

When the increase came through, I sat down to do the math and
determine what I could afford in terms of housing. Along with losing half my
paycheck, no longer being a part of the Housing Department staff meant I would
also lose my on-campus apartment in Towers Hall. Man, it would be tight. After
another round of crunching the numbers, I finally surrendered to the bitter
facts. My only consolation was that I had until the end of summer to find a
place that would suit my modest needs and even more modest budget.

It never crossed my mind to look for another coaching position. I
simply took the changes to my contract with UW Eau Claire as new constrictions
to my life. I was used to limitations, after all.

I continued to work as I had before, putting more time into my
housing position like the last runner of a relay whose team has already been
disqualified. I knew nothing I did now would be enough, but for whatever time
was left, I figured I might as well try to show my appreciation for Chuck’s
generosity.

The days plodded along. I shuffled from office to office to the
soccer field without much thought to anything at all. If I had any morale left,
it wasn’t enough to show. Hope for the future, eager anticipation, excitement
were all things of the past. I felt as if I had just turned onto Route 66 and
all that was left to do was settle in for a long, bleak ride.

There was only one diversion I had taken to, and it wasn’t much
help in bolstering my view. The events of Scott Savrsnik’s visit had been
hovering in my mind since the day he visited. I was continually rolling the
events of our encounter around in my head, trying to figure out what to make of
the incident. There was one thing above all else that I couldn’t shake from my
thoughts: after some of the shock had worn off, the first thing he’d asked me
was how I had contracted the bacteria.

This wasn’t a new concept by any means. I had wondered the same
thing myself, but as with most difficult questions, had put it out of my mind
in favor of more progress-promoting undertakings. My focus had always been on
moving forward, returning to the team, recovery, but with all the set-backs I’d
been experiencing and  now Scott’s comment, a new question was forming.
One persistent, which didn’t want to be dismissed:
Why?

Why had this happened? Both the injustice-of-fate why and the
physical, what-did-I-do-wrong why wrapped their nettled coils around my neck
and squeezed until I could take their suffocating presence no longer. I started
dropping by the campus library and scavenging for any books I could find on
Group A Streptococcus, or ‘my disease’. At first, most of what I learned was a
parody of what Dr. Henrickson had told me in the hospital:

Group A Streptococcus (GAS), referred to as toxic shock-like
syndrome by physicians because the symptoms often resemble those of toxic
shock. Although most commonly known as the cause of strep throat and impetigo,
it could turn invasive if able to infect the blood, muscle, fat tissue, or lungs.

I poured over page after page, stooped beneath the florescent
lights in the reference section of the library. With an incubation period of
only one to three days, the books said, the disease progresses quickly and has
the capacity to cause a great deal of harm in a short amount of time. I
experienced the potency of that fact first-hand when my illness turned from
flu-like symptoms and fatigue into all-out war and multiple organ failure in
the span of forty-eight hours.

I also came across an article which described a 30-year-old woman
in Canada who reported a sudden onset of nausea, vomiting, and lethargy
(symptoms which sounded all too familiar) one day and was subsequently taken to
the hospital, She died ten hours later, unable to be saved by the massive doses
of antibiotics administered to her.

Ten hours,
I thought and winced.
From sick to dead in ten measly hours.
Shaking
my head, I hastily set the article aside and turned back to the nearest book.

The flesh-eating disease is also known for the speed with which it
attacks and kills infected flesh, the book said, spreading as fast as three
centimeters per hour. During my fight with the disease, my family noticed my
skin progressively blacken by the hour as the bacteria attacked the living
tissue of my hands and feet. For reasons unknown, in its invasive form, the GAS
bacteria become unusually aggressive and release a toxin which irreparably
destroys the tissue, causing it to become gangrenous and morph into necrotizing
fasciitis, or “the flesh-eating disease." Surgical removal of the dead
flesh is almost always necessary to prevent the infection from spreading
further and becoming fatal.

Almost always.
I wondered what the numbers were for the people who walked away
from this disease still fully intact.

Each case I came across was like an echo of my own. From the
flu-like symptoms and lethargy that mark its onset to being sent home from the
hospital only to return in a worse condition than before. But one thing all of
the cases had which I didn’t was a cause: a splinter, a prick of a needle, a
cut. Each one seemed to have a visible place where the infection had found its
hole. But I hadn’t experienced any cuts or lacerations. The only injury I could
recall was a slight tear to my pectoral muscle while training, nothing that
broke the skin. So where had my infection come from? I could think of only one
person who might be able to help me find an answer: the man responsible for
saving my life.

~~~

Dr. Henrickson picked up on the fourth ring.

‘Scott! What can I do for you? Is everything all right?’

‘Everything’s fine,’ I said. ‘I was calling because I hoped you
could help me find an answer to something that’s been bothering me.’

‘Okay. I have a minute. Tell me what’s on your mind.’

‘I want to know how I contracted the bacteria. I’ve been reading
about it and I think I have a pretty good understanding of how it works, but
what I don’t get is how it entered my system. I never cut myself nor was I
pricked by anything that I can remember.’ I spoke in a rush, the thoughts that
had been nagging at me for the past few days suddenly gushing forth in a mad
torrent. When I bit down on my lip to keep from saying more, all I got was
silence from the other end of the line.

‘Dr. Henrickson?’ I said, worried I had lost him, either
figuratively or literally.

‘Yes, yes. I’m still here. But, Scott, I think you’re asking the
wrong question.’

My brow creased.  

‘What?’

‘Rather than worry about where or how you contracted it, you need
to look into what happened in the emergency room on your first visit.’

I stood suspended with the phone clutched to my ear, trying to
wrap my head around what Dr. Henrickson had just said and what he had implied.

‘Are you,’ I said slowly, cautiously; venturing into the land of
assumptions, ‘telling me that the doctor misdiagnosed my condition?’

‘You need to look into what happened in the ER on your first
visit.’

As I hung up the phone, my mind whirled. I looked at the myos and
thought about all that I had been through. I could still remember the beginning
clear as day. It had looked like heat exhaustion; the fatigue, headache, and
nausea all possible symptoms of being out in the sun for too long. Hell, I had
been the one to diagnose it as such. But here was Dr. Henrickson turning it
around and suggesting the blame should fall on the hospital, the medical
professionals.

I didn’t know what to make of it all. If I had been living in a
fog before, I was in a full-on mental trance now. The second I stopped focusing
on work, my thoughts flashed back to the conversation with Dr. Henrickson, to
the first time I was seen at the ER and released. I remembered how I had felt
much better after getting the IV, and it was only once I had proclaimed exactly
that, that the doctor had let me go. But then I remembered how young the ER
physician who treated me was, and how he had let me, the patient, determine the
course of the visit without taking the time to run even routine tests for
veracity’s sake; An event that only reminded me how bull-headed I could be and
led me to think of my mother and all that she had been through, remembering her
tears and imagining her devastated grief when I was in the coma. She blamed
herself, taking responsibility for her thirty-five-year-old son’s fate in some
crazy, incoherent way as only mothers could.

Did I owe it to her to get to the bottom of this? Would she even
want me to try? Unable to bear the confusion and uncertainty alone any longer,
I picked up the phone.

I eventually found Herrick and Hart, a full service law firm
located in downtown Eau Claire, less than a block from the Eau Claire County
Courthouse.

After a phone conversation with attorney Mike Schumacher, I was
invited to come in for a face-to-face meeting.

We gathered in the office conference room, an elegant space with
shelves of law books and various certificates and awards received by the firm
decorating the walls. The décor served its purpose: I was duly impressed.

Mike met me in the conference room moments after I arrived. He
looked a lot like General George Armstrong Custer (minus the goatee) in a
modern suit, with well-groomed brown hair, an almost blonde, straight painter’s
brush moustache, and a very direct gaze.

‘Thank you for meeting with me, Mr. Schumacher,’ I said as he
grasped the right myoelectric hand in the only handshake I could offer.

‘Call me Mike,’ He indicated that I should take a seat and turned
to do the same.

‘Yes, sir,’ I quickly replied and received a turn of the head and
smirk from him. We each took a seat in one of the black leather chairs, facing
each other across the long, dark walnut table.

‘Give me a rundown of what happened. Starting with your initial
visit to the ER.’

I nodded. ‘Okay, Mike…’

As he took notes, I told my story to the best of my ability. At
times he would pause in his writing and ask me to provide more detail.
Frequently throughout the telling he would shake his head from side to side,
often punctuating the motion with a disbelieving, ‘Really?’

I did my best to stay objective and accurate, and tried to keep
the emotion out of my voice as the story delved into the events of my stay at
Mercy Hospital. I wanted him to see worth in my case, but I also wanted him to
understand me and know where I was coming from. If he took the case, he would
be fighting against injustice, but he would be doing it for me.

When he had finished the interview, he shifted the yellow legal
pad and black, ballpoint pen to his right, folded his hands atop the table and
looked at me. I met his eyes and took a breath.

‘We’ve got a case here, Scott.’

I started to grin, bit down on my lip to keep it in check, then
reconsidered and let it grow. ‘Let’s roll.’

~~~

I just about skipped back to campus. For the first time in – well,
since the illness, I felt a surge of confidence. I was doing something;
fighting back. I may have been standing up against negligent doctors, but it
felt as if I was challenging the disease itself, contending with it out in the
open and bringing it before a court of law.

I met with the attorneys at Herrick and Hart again the following
week to start digging deeper into the names, dates, and such of the care I
received at Mercy Hospital. At the outset of the meeting they gave me another
gift: the benefaction of an eventuality. They would not only take my case, but
take it on a contingency, meaning the firm would only get paid if there was a
settlement of positive verdict – a win. It was too much to hope for and just
like that it was mine. I thanked them ardently and vigorously.

It would be another eighteen months before Herrick and Hart felt
comfortable enough with their outline of the case to finally request a hearing
with a judge and to be placed on the court calendar. I continued to meet with
them on a monthly basis and in the meantime funneled my newfound buoyancy into
straightening up the rest of my life. I searched high and low, and finally
managed to find an apartment that fit my budget and my needs.