Gerry’s resurrection

GERARD NILES will celebrate his 72nd birthday on Tuesday, something which seemed very unlikely 21 months ago. At this Easter-time Resurrection of The Christ, Gerry speaks about his own near-death experience due to Guillain-Barre Syndrome, a rare illness that affects the peripheral nerves of the body, causing weakness and paralysis as well as abnormal sensations. Having always enjoyed perfect health, Gerry didn’t take the feeling of pins and needles in both his hands and feet seriously when he awoke to go to the bathroom at about 3  am on July 10, 2002. Four days before he had had a bout of the flu: “Not a bad one,” he says, “but unusual for me because I never get the flu. It cleared up in three days.” By 6 am he was a lot worse and very unsteady on his feet. His first thought was to call his daughter, Lisa, a physiotherapist, for advice, as by this time there were pains up the back of his calves. “I realised something was radically wrong.”

At 10 am Gerry met with the neurosurgeon. No immediate diagnosis was made but an MRI was promised in two days’ time, if there was no improvement. At 5 pm while trying to get out of a chair, Gerry collapsed on the floor, and was ordered directly back to the nursing home by the neurosurgeon. To this day, Gerry has no recollection of anything in his life from that moment until six weeks later at the end of August, except that he was having trouble breathing and was told not to move when the MRI was being done.

His wife of 48 years, Jackie, to whom Gerry owes being alive this Easter Sunday, tells the story. A 20-minute MRI took 45 minutes and the only thing that they could come up with was that his back looked very bad. A second opinion was recommended. His daughter asked, “Why not check for Guillain Barre?” After all he had played golf that very day and his back was alright. The next day a neurologist took just 15 minutes to diagnose the dreaded syndrome and start treatment right away in the Intensive Care Unit of a nursing home. Gerry got progressively worse and one week later showed no brain activity.  Everything had shut down and it was suggested that he be taken off life support.

Jackie asked for another day although it was felt that if he lived there would be no quality of life. On her way home that night with their second daughter,  Jackie explained, “It might sound strange but we started making funeral plans, down to the readings and all.” Returning to visit at 5 am the next morning she says: “I noticed he was sweating, something he never does. I told the first doctor who passed by. He agreed to take a look and came back to me and just said ‘come.’ At the bedside he held Gerry’s hand and told him ‘if you are hearing me move your eyeballs.’ 

With the illness, his eyes had remained opened all the time but for the first time his eyeballs moved and we realised that he was alive and responding on command.” Jackie puts it down solely to “prayers, family friends and I think the whole of Trinidad and Tobago said prayers for Gerry,” who quipped, “I was not ready to go yet.” Recovery was slow and because his heart and lungs would not work on their own, so he remained hooked to the machine. He was fed intravenously, given continuous blood transfusions, and each day moved a little more. Strangely, one thing Gerry remembers about that period are the fantastic dreams.

“I know now that the doctors would be trying to get responses. But I would be dreaming that I was in some fete or working, and as the doctors came looking for me I wondered in the dream, how all you know where I am.” Gerry’s first recollection of being alive was of asking to go to the bathroom and the nurse bringing a bedpan. “I asked her what she planned to do with that and she replied you asked for a bedpan. I asked ‘who says I cannot walk?’, and told her I was partying the night before and worked the day before that, and I tried to get out of the bed but couldn’t  move.” He progressively got better and the first day he was taken for a little ride outside in a wheelchair. Gerard said, “Then it really hit me how bad I was. I couldn’t get into the wheelchair, they had to lift me, I was no help to myself at all. The day I left the nursing home they had to lift me into the car. I said ‘My God this is where I have reached’ and there and then promised myself I have to get out of this one, I have to be back out there walking again. I was not prepared to be a cripple.”

Exercises started in the bed and by December 2002 Gerry was out of the wheelchair through a lot of physiotherapy from his daughter, a massage therapist three days a week and swimming when he was allowed to go to the pool. This normally very stubborn and determined man did every single thing that he could possibly do to get back on his two feet. To the extent that when Jackie was out one day he pressured the nurse into letting him try to use a walker which had been brought to the house for him. “She said I was not ready for that yet. ‘I told her ‘bring it let’s see’. She was scared stiff but helped me out of the bed. I said let me go, made a few steps and crumpled. I tried it each day, kept making more steps and it just got better and better. “In May 2003, we moved house and realised I could walk around the compound, with the help of my stick of course, and it suddenly dawned on me if I could walk with the stick then I could walk without it so I used to take the stick for a walk.

“Now I am up to three miles, more or less, every day, and am riding on a noodle ten rounds of the pool. I am still supposed to walk with the stick but I purposely forget it. I am back driving as well.” How does Gerry feel about this resurrection experience? “The way I really and truly feel about this is that the good Lord needed to reach me and I guess that was his way of reaching me, and I think I got the message pretty quickly so that what I would call my miraculous recovery made quite an impression on me. “Today I am 75 percent cured and hope for 90 percent plus but I say to the Lord every day, if he chooses to keep me no better than I am now, when I think I could have been a vegetable, then I am quite happy the way I am. Each morning I say, ‘Dear Lord, thank you for allowing me to see and hear this morning. I feel total appreciation for being in this world and being able to do the things you want to do’.” Has it made him a humbler person?

“Very, very much more humble. What it has done is made me realise I need to go out there and make people understand how fortunate they are when they get up in the morning and can walk, talk, see and hear — that in itself is a blessing. “If you can appreciate that there will be no such thing as a bad day, I have always held that opinion. You will have problems and you take care of them, if it comes back to haunt me then I know I did not handle it right the first time. I have always had, and continue to have, a very positive outlook on life.” No one yet knows why Guillain-Barre Syndrome strikes some people and not others, nor does anyone know exactly what sets the disease in motion. What is known is that a very high protein count is a symptom of the disorder.