{"id":32662,"date":"2026-11-05T10:13:16","date_gmt":"2026-11-05T15:13:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/?p=32662"},"modified":"2026-11-06T13:12:15","modified_gmt":"2026-11-06T18:12:15","slug":"tcs-journey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/tcs-journey\/","title":{"rendered":"TC\u2019s Journey"},"content":{"rendered":"

TC\u2019s Journey<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

In the darkness, green lights flashed on and off, on and off, on and off. A horrible, repeating thump filled the air. Thump. Thump. Thump. My body felt as if a thousand bees were stinging me, tiny but painful stings from my face to my toes. It seemed to last forever, and no matter how painful or frightening the nightmare was, I couldn\u2019t wake myself up. Flashing green lights and black, thumping darkness, relentless. Whoosh, thump, whoosh, thump, over and over. The stinging covered my entire body. I could not open my eyes or make sense of the horrid dream.<\/span><\/p>\n

It was my LifeFlight helicopter ride to the hospital in Cleveland, as I learned five days later when I finally woke up.<\/span><\/p>\n

According to my family (I don\u2019t remember any of it), I shouted, \u201cI can\u2019t breathe! Please help me, I can\u2019t breathe!\u201d at the paramedic attending me as I lay helpless, strapped to a gurney. As they wheeled me out to the ambulance, my heart stopped. Cardiac arrest. I was dead. The paramedic began CPR immediately, and a few minutes later they got a pulse back. The ambulance raced to the local hospital in eight minutes, where I was intubated and stabilized. I\u2019m told they gave me propofol, fentanyl, antibiotics, and other medicines. I was in critical condition and needed the expert care that only a large, well-staffed hospital could provide, so LifeFlight was summoned, and I was flown to a major hospital in Cleveland and placed in the ICU.<\/span><\/p>\n

Five days later, I woke in a hospital bed with my family all around me. My oldest son asked whether I had seen the football game on Saturday. I was confused; to me, it was still Tuesday. To my family and the rest of the world, it was Sunday. Days had vanished, and I had no memory of time passing. The breathing tube had been removed from my throat the day before, leaving it raw and making it hard to talk.<\/span><\/p>\n

My Health Issues Started at the Beginning of August<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

My descent into serious, complex health problems didn\u2019t begin with the cardiac arrest. It started near the first of August, when I developed a severe UTI. Tests revealed an acute kidney injury (AKI) and sepsis. An ambulance took me to MetroHealth in Cleveland, where I was admitted for 11 days. After a week in the ICU, I was moved to a standard room as the UTI improved and the sepsis cleared. Eventually, I was sent home.<\/span><\/p>\n

Four days later, I developed horrible abdominal pain. At our local emergency room, scans revealed not one hernia but two. One was so serious and complex that none of the doctors at our local hospital had ever seen anything like it. Once again, I was taken to MetroHealth and placed in the ICU. Several doctors examined me and scheduled surgery, but the procedure was postponed five times over eight days.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Seven-Hour Surgery<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

The double hernia repair was supposed to take about three hours. It took a little over seven. The repair was far more complex than the surgeons expected and required extensive internal work.<\/span><\/p>\n

I began my recovery in the ICU and moved to a regular room after three days. I was there for only a day and a night, and thank goodness, because my roommate in that Medicare-provided, semi-private room spoke a foreign language and decided 3:00 AM was a great time to call his girlfriend or wife and yell into the phone for two hours. The woman on the other end was so loud that I could hear her too, though I couldn\u2019t understand a word she said.<\/span><\/p>\n

I Want to Go Home<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

I begged the doctors to let me go home, telling them I felt much better than I actually did. After endless pleading, they discharged me with a \u201clittle pneumonia\u201d and some antibiotics. Barely 48 hours later, my lungs filled with fluid and I couldn\u2019t breathe. My heart stopped. It was not a little pneumonia; it was HAP (hospital-acquired pneumonia) and MRSA.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I don\u2019t remember struggling to breathe, the EMS arrival, the ambulance, or the helicopter. I don\u2019t remember dying.<\/span><\/p>\n

For the next 25 days, I lay in hospital beds across two facilities, spending the last few days in physical and occupational therapy. I wanted desperately to go home, but my family urged me to let the doctors decide when I was truly ready. Between August and September, I spent more than 50 days in hospital beds, growing weaker and weaker until I could barely stand or walk.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

As I recovered, I worried I wouldn\u2019t have a job to return to. But Darcy held everything together and gave me time to recover gradually (a process I\u2019m still working through), so I could manage a few hours of work each day for Cloudeight. <\/span><\/p>\n

I get stronger every day; I can walk using a walker and a cane. I\u00a0 work more on Cloudeight and do more household chores as time goes by. The doctors and therapist told me it could be six to eight months before I get back even close to normal. I’m trying! It’s the fight of my life, and I’m determined to win.<\/span><\/p>\n

Thanks to Darcy and all our wonderful Cloudeight friends, whose encouragement and prayers have helped me so much, Cloudeight is recovering too. God willing, we\u2019ll have things back to normal by the first of the year.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The daily newsletter is back, and the weekly newsletter will resume on Friday, November 6, 2026. We hope to resume our computer repair service soon. The emotional s<\/span>upport and donations from our friends and subscribers have kept us going through this immensely difficult time.<\/span><\/p>\n

So, I thank my family for being by my side every step of the way and for all the love they show me every day.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I thank Darcy for keeping things going when I was in the hospital. And I thank all our friends and subscribers for sticking with us. And I thank God for helping me through this painful and difficult journey. <\/span><\/p>\n

My youngest recently wrote in an essay, “Mattering is knowing someone would notice if you were gone.”<\/em> It’s good to know that you matter.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

TC\u2019s Journey In the darkness, green lights flashed on and off, on and off, on and off. A horrible, repeating thump filled the air. Thump. Thump. Thump. My body felt as if a thousand bees were stinging me, tiny but painful stings from my face to my toes. It seemed to last forever, and no matter how painful\u2026 Read More »<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":26737,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[228],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-32662","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-essays"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32662","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32662"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32662\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32679,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32662\/revisions\/32679"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26737"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32662"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32662"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32662"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}