My story

To document what happened to me in 2010, I typed up a brief history of events:

In mid-August, I developed what I thought was a routine stomach flu. Couldn't keep anything down one morning, so I called in sick and stayed home. Typically, I'd be fine the next day, with regained appetite. Instead, more of the same...even water wasn't staying down. On the third day (a Saturday), I called my doctor and made an emergency office visit that my neighbor drove me to. Jenn was in Europe on her first business trip since Evan was born, so she had no idea I was sick. Fortunately, my mother-in-law lives with us and takes care of Evan, and she was a godsend to also take care of me when I got sick.

Doctor was of little help. I felt very weak from not eating, and all he advised was to drink some Gatorade and Pediasure. I choked it down and went to a hospital on Monday for an IV...my wife's boss picked me up and drove me. There I got an IV and they discharged me. They originally thought I was drunk or on drugs, but they couldn't find anything.

I felt better after the IV, but I also felt like I was having a nervous breakdown. I was overwhelmed by the "magnitude" of activities that my life (or anyone's) entailed. My PCP called me when he heard I'd visited the on-call doc over the weekend. He said to call 911 if I felt the need. I didn't. But for some reason, I insisted on packing a bag for the hospital just in case. I found myself extremely anxious and nervous about everything. I couldn't even go to sleep because I kept panicking that I was going to forget something. At ~11:00 p.m. I woke up, nervous again, and Kim got up to prepare me some rice soup...the only thing I could keep down. But then I picked up the phone and called 911. Almost involuntarily. An ambulance came and took me to the hospital. Kim and Evan followed in a car.

Long story short, the doctor questioned me and didn't want me to leave. I called Jenn and explained the situation. She told the doctor not to let me go home. To this day, she hasn't explained what I had done to convince her of this. They admitted me to the psych ward and put me on schizophrenia medication. For a day, I was thought to be mentally unstable. Thankfully, the doctors correctly diagnosed me with a medical condition, and admitted me to the hospital. Jenn cut her trip short and found me as I was being transported back over to the hospital. I was never so happy to see her.

I was there for two weeks, it felt like a month. They performed every test known to man on me, and thankfully I only remember half of it. Matthew came up from Manhattan. Even my Dad visited for a weekend. My condition degenerated. I lost 25 lbs and doctors thought I wasn't going to make it. I lost my sense of balance, couldn't walk straight, eyes shifted involuntarily, still wouldn't eat, was nauseous continually, I couldn't perform basic cognitive functions like drawing a clock face or subtracting by sevens. I knew who I was but had no concept of time. Testing initially focused on toxicology - exposure to dangerous materials. That, infectious diseases, many of which I hadn't heard of, cancer, too...they all came up negative.

My family argued with me to eat, and it was like a punishment. My brain told me I wasn't hungry. A B12 shot and an IV hookup helped turn me around enough that I could be discharged from the hospital. That, and they'd tested me for everything already. They did conclude that my brain activity was down, based on an EEG they performed. I checked into a rehab facility, a place where most people are in their 80's. I still had large pockets of time that I couldn't account for, and still had trouble eating.

Jenn became frustrated with me and my lack of progress. I also had an attitude at times (go figure). I had periods of dementia where I did things I cannot remember, and I was sent to the psych ward at the hospital several times.

At the end of September, I had an awakening, a turning point. I could then account for every minute of the day, every day. I regained my appetite. I started attending my physical therapy sessions fully (apparently, I was only good for 5-10 minutes for weeks - no recollection of that).

I started regaining my balance and didn't need to use a walker anymore. I was aware of visiting doctors that my wife took me to. Some of them I was seeing for the third time, and finally I could actually respond to them myself - Jenn had to act of my behalf before then.

I was sent back to the the psych ward ER for almost 2 weeks when the rehab facility decided they didn't want to treat me anymore. I was a prisoner. Most of the people in there were drunks or drug addicts, and all I had to look forward to was when the meal trays were sent down. I slept a lot.

One of the doctors who had seen me in August, and was instrumental in diagnosing me as non-psychotic, found out I was back in the psych ward and was furious. He got his boss involved and lobbied for the hospital to treat me itself. I was given an IVIg transfusion that supercharges your immune system. The theory was that I had an auto-immune condition where my body was attacking itself, trying to fight something that wasn't there anymore. The treatment accelerated my recovery, and almost overnight, I made significant gains in test scores of these neuro-psych tests they kept giving me. By the 3rd week in October, I left the hospital for the last time and returned home for the first time since August. I had the IVIg treatment two more times, 4 weeks apart, at home. Each time, I got progressively better, and more testing showed that I was much better than when they had tested me in August. I was back to above-average in brain functionality. I went back to work on 1/31, and next week I'll return to full-time status.

I spent some of my time at home reading my hospital discharge report so I understood everything they tested me for, but Matthew did so much for me. He lived with me in the hospital for a week. He researched the rehab facility and scoped it out with Jenn. He was tethered to his iPhone and his laptop, and he spent every waking moment researching what I might have had. He constantly talked to the doctors and Jenn...he kept them thinking about possibilities, treatments, new tests, etc. He came back up to get me out of the psych ward. I am forever indebted to him.

The official diagnosis is encephalopathy, which is a medical term for "brain isn't working right." Mostly my frontal lobe was affected. I'm about 98% now, just occasional pockets of anxiety and frustration. I've been back to the gym to regain the physical strength I had lost, which was significant. Work has been relatively easy, and I'm ready to get back to full-time status. But it's scary to think that I almost died, and that my brain, of all things, was what failed me. It's all I have, and what made me good at what I do. Fortunately, I expect to recover 100% and continue on my career path. My team welcomed me back, and I've been overwhelmed by the support of family, friends, and coworkers. I appreciate so much more what I had and what I have now. I didn't know that so many people, especially co-workers, cared about my welfare.

I don't know if it's ignorance or stupidity, but I'm not worried about this happening again. If it did, I would immediately recognize the symptoms, and I'd know which doctors to call. We know the treatment that helps the most, too. If it happened again, then yes, I would forever be scared that my life would never return to normal. For now, I feel it was too rare, too obscure, too much of a mystery that something like that can happen again. According to one neurologist, who we met to obtain a second opinion, these types of issues are usually a one-time occurrence. It's either fatal, or the body learns to minimize the symptoms (at the time, he made no promise that I'd recover 100%) and never returns. He could be wrong, but I can't live in fear. I have to move on. My return to full-time status at work on Monday essentially signifies the end of my recovery. It is ironic that Jenn is on another business trip, this time in India, so it's as if we've come full-circle. She'll return and I'll be fine, and the 6 months prior never happened, it would seem.

Evan made me a liar

Ok, so I showed the Evan Scoot and stated that it would be a few days before Evan started walking. Well, Evan made me a liar. Because he walked TODAY, February 11, 2011! He liked walking so much, he wore himself out doing it. Not only can he walk and talk at the same time, he can stand from a kneeling position without using his hands, and he can clap while standing. And here is the video of this epic achievement.

The Evan Scoot

Evan isn't walking yet, but he will any day now. He can take a few steps without support, and can easily walk holding someone's hand. In the interest of preservation, we documented his currently preferred method of getting around, what we call "the scoot." Soon, this will be a thing of the past, and he can find another way to put holes in the knees of his pants.

The Evan Waggle

It took awhile, but Kim finally caught the waggle on film, and now it is a permanent part of American History. He seems to do this only to the Alphabet song. Watch carefully after all of the letters are sung.

More Evan

Jenn is in India right now...her first trip away from home since I've recovered, and her first trip since my illness (she was in Europe when I was hospitalized). We've captured some of Evan's signature moves and I wanted to share them with everyone, including Jenn. This first one is from December...Evan is not shy about showing fatigue.


This second video is from December as well, and it shows him walking his zebra walker toy...thingy.


More videos to come soon.