Friday, November 21, 2008 9:53 PM CST
Road to recovery is long for teacher who had outpatient surgery
By Paul Swiech, Lee News Service
Dave Nelson, a popular chemistry teacher at Normal Community High School, was on bus duty one day after school when he turned to Principal Jeanette Nuckolls and said he was having outpatient gallstone surgery and would be back in three days.
“I said, ‘Great, I’ll see you when you get back,’” Nuckolls recalled.
That was in October 2005. Nelson, 47, has yet to get back into the classroom and won’t this year.
“It’s as if time has stopped,” said his wife, Kim Nelson.
Time hasn’t been kind to the once-robust teacher and former coach.
After his surgery, Nelson become seriously ill and was diagnosed with pancreatitis. He nearly died twice, has endured numerous surgeries and battled just about every infection.
Meanwhile, Kim has taken on insurance companies, hospitals and nursing homes on Dave’s behalf. From Oct. 13, 2005, until Oct. 3, 2008, Dave wasn’t home, instead living in a variety of hospitals, rehabilitation centers and nursing homes.
He’s back home now, with the highlights of his day being working with a personal aide who helps him get ready in the morning; physical therapy at OSF St. Joseph Medical Center, Bloomington, where he is trying to stand again; and his afternoon motorized scooter ride to Northpoint Elementary School to pick up his daughters, Katie, 8; and Elizabeth, 6.
Dave hopes to be running with his daughters by next summer. “I can’t catch them in my wheelchair,” he said.
He also hopes to return to the classroom.
“I just want to be back to where I was before I got sick,” Dave said. “I’d like to forget as much of it (the past three years) as I can. But I’ll always have the scars to remind me of my odyssey.”
In his early chemistry teaching days, Dave also coached basketball, volleyball and baseball.
Thirteen years ago, Dave began teaching at Normal Community West High School and stayed there for eight years. Then, he transferred to Normal Community High School, which is closer to the Nelson home in the Northpoint Subdivision. Kim, 43, who was a graphic artist with the Illinois Farm Bureau, decided to stay home with the girls.
In October 2005, Dave was teaching chemistry and keeping statistics for volleyball and basketball.
Nuckolls said Nelson was a popular teacher because he related well to students.
“He made it fun to learn,” Nuckolls said. “That doesn’t mean it was easy. The kids liked him a lot.”
“I’d always be blowing something up or changing the colors of something,” Dave recalled.
He rode his bike to school early every morning, often arriving at 6 a.m., and often stayed after school to help students who were struggling.
At 6-foot-6-inches tall and weighing 270 pounds, Dave felt great until one day when he played basketball. He became ill and saw a gastroenterologist, who proposed an endoscopic surgery to remove stones from Dave’s gallbladder and bile duct.
“He did tell me that there was a one-in-a-million chance that I would get pancreatitis,” Dave recalled.
The pancreas is a small organ — about 6 inches long — in the upper abdomen and connected to the small intestine, according to the National Pancreas Foundation. The pancreas is essential to the digestive process.
Pancreatitis is a rare disease that involves inflammation of the pancreas. The disease isn’t fully understood but is sometimes caused by gallstones.
Dave had the surgery on Oct. 13, 2005, at BroMenn Regional Medical Center, Normal. He declined to name the surgeon because he doesn’t blame the doctor for what happened next.
Several hours after the surgery, Dave developed a severe pain in his stomach and began throwing up. Kim took him to BroMenn and he was in the intensive care unit for two weeks.
A BroMenn doctor recommended that Dave transfer to Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago because that hospital had a doctor specializing in pancreatic surgery. Dave was diagnosed with pancreatitis but no one knew how he got the disease.
By then, Dave was in so much pain that he was heavily medicated.
“I wasn’t aware of what was going on,” he admitted. “In fact, I don’t remember much of the next two years. I was either too sick or drugged up.”
During the next four months, Dave had five surgeries, each removing a part of his pancreas.
Late in 2005, he went into an alpha coma. Kim was told he had a 10 percent chance of coming out of the coma.
“We started preparing ourselves to remove him from life support,” she said.
“One day, he was this healthy man, we had a good life, our girls were 3 and 5 and we were just settling into our new house,” she said. “Suddenly, we’re making plans for Dave to die. We had no will and the only life insurance we had was through his job and I’m thinking things like, ‘Well, we can move in with my parents.’”
But Dave came out of the coma.
By February 2006, he was well enough to be discharged to the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago. But soon afterward, he was in excruciating pain, his blood pressure dropped and he was hallucinating. He was rushed back to Northwestern, where he was stabilized.
Next, a bed sore that had tunneled all the way to his bone was found and surgically removed at Rush Presbyterian St. Luke’s Medical Center.
Dave was discharged to a nursing home. During the next several months, Dave alternated between nursing homes and hospital intensive care units as he battled pockets of puss from the pancreas, a variety of infections, pneumonia and back pain.
“I was on enough narcotics to fill an elephant,” he said. By this time, he was down to 137 pounds.
Kim divided her time between being with Dave or being home with her children. She credits family — especially her parents, Ray and Cindy Slaubaugh of Canton — with helping to take care of Katie and Elizabeth.
Included in the community support were several fundraisers in Unit 5 schools. That support helped the Nelsons, especially on the rough days.
“Some days, I was so tired and so sad and so depressed that I’d get home and just sit in the chair and not be able to get up,” Kim recalled.
Dave became emotional and upset. “I asked ‘Why did I get this?’” Talks with a hospital chaplain and psychologist, as well as prescription medicine and family support, helped.
In August 2007, doctors decided Dave finally was strong enough to sustain a surgery to reroute drainage from the pancreas to the small intestine. The surgery was a success.
But Dave wasn’t out of the woods. In March 2008, he and Kim were informed by the nursing home where he was staying that Blue Cross Blue Shield was withholding coverage for physical and occupational therapy because Dave wasn’t making significant progress.
In April, the nursing home administrator threatened to discharge Dave that day because of an outstanding bill and tried to get Dave to sign a new contract. He didn’t, but they handed him a $7,000 bill.
“I was madder than I’ve ever been in my whole life,” Kim said.
About the same time, Dave had to resign his Unit 5 position because he had exhausted all of his medical leave, meaning Kim and the girls had to go on Medicaid. “I was balling,” Dave admitted. “That was one of my lowest points. I felt I was no longer supporting my family.”
Eventually, the nursing home agreed to close the case with $5,000 in donations from the Nelsons’ church, Calvary United Methodist Church, Normal. Dave moved to another nursing home, spent about a month in intensive therapy at OSF Saint Francis Medical Center in Peoria, then returned home Oct. 3.
Kim worked with the Community Reintegration Program through the Life Center for Independent Living to make their downstairs bathroom wheelchair accessible and to build a wheelchair ramp in their garage.
Both Dave and Kim have had to adjust their expectations. They expected Dave’s recovery at home to be quicker. He is gaining strength slowly and is up to 205 pounds.
Katie and Elizabeth said they’re glad to have their father home.
“But I’ve got to get used to one thing — watching football!” Katie said.
Dave doesn’t like using a wheelchair and doesn’t like to call attention to himself. “I just don’t feel normal.”
He said he wants to recover and return to the classroom and community involvement.
“I owe it to this community.”
Contact Paul Swiech at pswiech@pantagraph.com.
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Mama says wrote on Nov 22, 2008 5:27 AM:
You have a good woman and children.
Prayers for all at this time. "