November 21, 2018 at 4:22 p.m.
Wendel is ‘pretty OK’ after surviving two near-death experiences
Wendel is ‘pretty OK’ after surviving two near-death experiences
Editor’s note: The prologue and the epilogue to this piece are by Ray Cooney, editor of The Commercial Review. The story itself is in the subject’s own words.
Josie (Guggenbiller) Wendel was living the life of a teenaged girl’s dreams.
She had graduated from college in three years.
She started a career in her field of study.
She had married her high school sweetheart, who she had dated for five years.
She had her first child.
She had moved on to a second job.
“If I was like 15 and pictured what my life would be like at 23, that was exactly the type of life I would have pictured,” said the 2010 Fort Recovery High School graduate this week.
Then she found out just how quickly that picture-perfect life can change.
The following is Josie’s story, in her own words, as originally shared on the Project Everybody Beautiful blog.
••••••••••
It only takes one. One day. One hour. One minute. One second to change your life forever. Mine happened in less than a day by something even the best doctors can only describe as “The Perfect Storm.”
It all started with what I thought was a late season flu. It started at 3 a.m. on that specific April day. I called into work, because who wants to be at work when you feel miserable? By noon I had developed a terrible pain in both of my thighs. I thought they were just Charlie Horses since I hadn’t been drinking much that day, so I thought they had developed because of dehydration. I sat in the shower all afternoon as the heat was able to cause the pain to subside, if only for a minute. I suffered through the next six hours until my husband came home and convinced me to go to our local emergency room.
Two hours into my ER visit, my first diagnosis was made and a CareFlight to Dayton was being arranged. Original diagnosis, sepsis. They believed my organs were shutting down. My husband called my parents and they were there within a half hour. Three hours into my ER visit, my left leg began to turn black. My doctor came in to re-evaluate and my diagnosis was changed. I went from having sepsis to having necrotizing fasciitis — the “flesh-eating bacteria” in layman’s terms. Four hours into my ER visit, my flight to Dayton was canceled and I was now going to be flown out to Columbus. Six hours into my ER visit, I was CareFlighted out.
I could tell you everything about that 20-minute flight. The twinkling lights of all the small towns and big cities. The sound of the helicopter. Everything. I can tell you how much my blankets flew around when they pushed me off the helicopter. But from the second those elevator doors shut to bring me down to their ER, I can tell you absolutely nothing. Nothing for two weeks. I can only recall one small moment in time when my husband told me that I lost my leg “but it was all going to be OK.” And let me tell you. He wasn’t lying. I was OK. And I still am OK.
My husband and I were unaware of how serious this was when we left our local ER. It wasn’t until my husband went back to my ER room to grab something we had forgotten and saw my nurse sitting there crying when he truly realized how bad it was.
My husband rode with my mom to Columbus. They had made the two-hour trip in just an hour’s time. They knew time was of the essence. The surgeons were waiting for my husband and mom at the door to sign the consents and to allow him to see me one last time before sending me into a long and hard surgery, a surgery that I had only a 5-percent chance of making it through. They originally tried making me an above-the-knee (AK) amputee. After surgery, they brought me to the surgical intensive care unit, where I continued to decline. Within an hour I was heading back into surgery because they had not gotten all of the infection. I went from an AK to a hip disarticulation. At this point, they had stopped the infection in my leg. A colostomy was put in place to help prevent infection in my amputation site.
Necrotizing fasciitis is rare enough, but the form I experienced had only been seen three times in the U.S. Mine was the fourth. None of the prior patients had survived this deadly, fast-acting infection.
A few days later, I began to decline again. But this time, my right arm was swelling and was hot to touch. The infection had spread to my arm.
Amputation was a threat. By the grace of God they were able to save my arm but had to take quite a bit of muscle and tendon to do so. I then began to improve.
After two weeks in the SICU, 24 surgeries, a breathing tube, nasogastric tube, a central line, an eight-week catheter, four weeks in the burn unit and two weeks in rehab, I could finally come home to my husband and little boy. A little boy who would be turning 1 year old in a week’s time, a little boy who had forgotten who his mom was.
Even after going through all the surgeries and recoveries and rehabs, the hardest part, by far, was coming home and having my baby boy not know who I was.
He would cry when his dad put him near me. He refused to say “mama.” I couldn’t care for him the way a mom should be able to. I couldn’t be alone with him, as I couldn’t even pick him up. It was just heartbreaking. I had to bribe him with M&M’s just to get a smile out of him. But thankfully, time did heal this wound. Eventually, he started to come up to me without having to be bribed. Then came the smiles. And then the hugs. And then, best of all, a word every mom loves to hear, my sweet baby boy called me “Mama!”
My rehab continued over a year. I had learned to use my less functioning hand more and more every day. I had learned to walk with my prosthetic though I preferred to use a walker. I returned to work six months after I had originally gotten sick. And best of all, eight months later, on New Year’s Eve, I found out I was pregnant with my second child.
Our parents, friends and family were wonderfully shocked — so glad that we were still able to grow our family but still so worried because our plates were already so full and now we were adding more. This child was not planned, but God must’ve known we needed this sweet little baby.
In September of the year following my amputation, I gave birth to a beautiful 9 pound, 1 ounce, baby girl.
It was a Tuesday that I gave birth, and we came home on a Friday around noon. It was a beautiful and busy fall day. We had lots of friends and family stopping over to see our new addition. Our world was brighter and more beautiful.
My husband’s parents came over a little later on that particular Friday. A neighborhood friend had just left and they wanted to see their newest granddaughter again. Around 9 p.m., I had thought I had lost control of my bladder because I had felt a big gush. I casually went to the bathroom where I found a very large pool of blood. I tried I clean it, but the bleeding wouldn’t let up. My husband happened to come to the back of the house a few moments later and I called him into the bathroom. We both knew something was wrong. We left the kids with my husband’s parents and we were off to the ER. Again. But this time I knew how serious it was. This time was much scarier. I had more to lose. And I’m saying all this after losing an entire leg the first time.
My bleeding had picked up dramatically. I had soaked through a large maternity pad and a towel within minutes. My husband was giving our vehicle all it had. We made it to the ER just in the nick of time. My husband parked directly in front of the doors, grabbed a wheelchair and brought it over to the passenger side, all while I was telling him I was about ready to pass out. He rushed me inside and banged on the ER door until someone could open it just wide enough for that wheelchair to fit through. Somehow, my world never went dark. I still can remember each minute of that night.
As they laid me on the table and began taking my vitals, all I could think about was my cousin who had passed away after childbirth less than a year prior. She was the same age I was right then. I kept thinking about her husband, about how my husband would take care of two kids on his own.
I heard them say my blood pressure was 40/20. They started an IV and started transfusing me with blood. After multiple sticks, they finally were able to get a blood draw for labs. My hemoglobin was 3.1 instead of the normal 13.5. I was hemorrhaging. I was calm but I was afraid. My husband was afraid but comforting. Again, he had called my parents in. As my husband describes it, he knew it was pretty bad when the doctor left a man who just had a heart attack to come help me.
I was then transferred to a trauma room where they inserted a central line so they could give me even more blood. CareFlight was called even though a storm was rolling in. I passed a very large clot, larger than a softball, just before CareFlight arrived, and by some grace of God, my bleeding had begun to normalize.
I was transferred out to the Valley (Miami Valley Hospital), where I was told I had the potential of needing a hysterectomy. And all I could think of was what my husband told me before I left. He told me to do whatever they said, even if it meant taking it all. He’d rather have me then another baby ever.
Thankfully, my bleeding was back to normal and no surgery was needed. I was watched in the pediatric intensive care unit for two days and then sent back home to rest and recover with my babies and husband.
Life is hard. Our timeline is so unpredictable, and complex, and wonderful, and ugly, and uneventful, and so eventful we could cry one way or the other.
But a timeline is made up of a series of events. The line that joins the beginning and the end of us. The most important line that goes on our tombstone. Every event that leads up to a peak or a valley on our timeline was put there for a purpose that we never know about until the next thing happens.
I could’ve become disabled when I lost my leg. But all of my highs and lows before that moment taught me how much of a fighter I was. It didn’t take losing my leg to teach me that. I already knew that. I was brought up that way. After I lost my leg, I became a person that had the ability to carry even the largest of burdens on one leg.
I could’ve stopped having children after I hemorrhaged. No one would have blamed my husband and I. But my desire to be a mom overpowered any fear I could possibly have had about it happening again. I used my resources and pooled together the best possible team to make sure it didn’t happen again. I made sure that my story didn’t stop after the valleys on my timeline. And it didn’t. Even after all the ugly, the world became a bit more beautiful this July when we welcomed our third child, a girl, into the world.
••••••••••
Josie’s life now is decidedly not what she would have pictured when she was 15 years old — she describes it as “pretty OK.” There are things that, if she could, she would change.
She was an active athlete in high school, playing volleyball, basketball and softball, and later enjoyed participating in events like Fort Recovery’s Mad Run 5K obstacle course.
Activities like those are, of course, now off the table, but otherwise, “I don’t find many things I can’t do,” she said.
Josie is passionate about life as a mother of three — Jake, 4, Mya, 2, and Tessa, four months — with her husband, Matt, a 2009 Fort Recovery High School graduate. She lives in Wendelin, Ohio, and continues to work for Mercer Health.
She is also a motivational speaker and writer who shares her thoughts on her Facebook page — One Legged Mommy.
Her biggest challenges on a daily basis are external — the questions, the stares. Her changes are visible. They draw a reaction.
“I think that’s what I struggle with the most,” she said. “I don’t want to be rude and not answer their questions, but at the same time, it can be like an hour conversation. … I’ve gotten good at shortening my story.”
There are also those, she said, who treat her as if she is still ailing.
She’s not.
She was just incredibly unlucky. Twice.
The two health scares that put her on the brink of death were unrelated.
They are also over.
“It could happen to anybody,” Josie said. “It just so happened to happen to me.”
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