Suffering from COVID-19 and lying in his hospital bed at the Intermountain Medical Center, Thomas Kearl remembers that one night he was “afraid to close his eyes” because he was afraid he would “not make it.”
After removing the ventilation tube that was placed during his first tracheostomy, a medical team gave 59-year-old Kearl two options.
“One way was: ‘Thom, we’ll make it comfortable for you. You will feel no more pain and just walk in peace, ”Kearl said in a Zoom call to journalists on Thursday.
His other option, which the doctors recommended as his “only chance of survival”, was to have a second tracheostomy. “But it’s risky. It’s dangerous, ”they explained because of the state he was in.
“I don’t want any more trach,” Kearl said to his doctors, “but I don’t want to die. So if that’s my only choice, let’s do it. “
Kearl was hospitalized for 223 days. During that time, he was resuscitated four times, intubated five times, and resuscitated for 17 minutes, according to an Intermountain Healthcare spokesperson. After all, he had to learn how to walk again.
“It was horrible,” an emotional Kearl said in a virtual press conference Thursday. “I’ve felt more pain than I’ve ever felt.”
When Kearl finally left the hospital on August 24, Kenny Loggins’ song “Celebrate Me Home” was playing – at Kearl’s request – as his wife Nanette Kearl rolled him down a hallway. Doctors and nurses lined up along the walls, cheering and clapping as Thomas Kearl waved, high-five, and fists the people who looked after him.
“Thanks to all!” he said before getting on the elevator and making his long-awaited return to his Salt Lake City home.
As he lies back in his own bed, Kearl quickly realizes, “I didn’t win this fight. … I can hardly walk with a rollator. I can’t throw soccer balls, baseball, and frisbees with my kids yet. But I am bound and determined. I will fight.”
Kearl now does three hours a day, six days a week, and he still needs “six to 15 liters of oxygen to get up and move around,” said Dr. John Frampton, Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation Physician with Intermountain Health. But he’s come a long way.
Kearl fell ill in July 2020 but soon recovered from what he thought was COVID-19 at the time. To be “brutally honest”, he said at that point he had seen all of the small businesses that had been “ravaged” and their lives “destroyed” by the pandemic. “And I thought COVID was a flu that they just wiped out all over the world,” he said.
“Boy, was I wrong,” said Kearl. “Not only is it real, it’s a nuisance.”
As cases continue to rise in Utah, Kearl is encouraging people to get vaccinated. “Take me as an example of what can happen,” he said, “because it’s terrible.”
(Screenshot) Thomas Kearl talks about Zoom from his Salt Lake City home on September 2, 2021 after spending 223 days in the hospital with COVID-19.
“I didn’t mean to die”
From December 27 to January 2, Kearl was vacationing with his family in Arizona. His youngest son got engaged on New Year’s Eve and “we just had a wonderful time,” said Kearl.
After returning home, one of her daughters learned that a friend she’d spent time with just before their trip had tested positive for COVID-19. When her daughter also got a positive test, the rest of the family went to see if she was sick too.
Of the 12, 10 were positive. Kearl and his son-in-law got negative results, “but I was very sick,” he said.
Kearl went to the hospital on January 11th, his birthday. After a few tests, he was sent home. “A few days later I have [had a] 105 fever and couldn’t hold my head up, ”he said.
His family took him to the emergency room where a doctor told him his COVID-19 test was false negative. Kearl was admitted and soon transferred to the ICU.
“I had an amazing nurse named Jake that night,” said Kearl, who “made me feel warm and comfortable in a cold and scary place.”
Kearl “tried to sleep through all the poking and nudging,” but he couldn’t keep his oxygen levels where it needed to be. A doctor said to him: “Thom, we have to tie you to a ventilator, otherwise you won’t survive the night.”
There were “a lot of people walking around,” said Kearl, and the next thing he remembers is waking up a few days later with tubes in his throat and nose. He was getting sicker and sicker, he said, and “got every known human complication associated with COVID,” including viral pneumonia, bacterial pneumonia, kidney failure, sepsis, and MRSA among others.
(Intermountain Healthcare) Thomas Kearl, 59, of Salt Lake City, was hospitalized with COVID-19 for 223 days.
“During the trial, the nurses and my family told me I was coding,” said Kearl, meaning “I died.”
“I didn’t mean to die,” Kearl said Thursday, his voice cracking as he got emotional. “I love my family. I love my children. I love my three grandchildren. So I kept fighting. And thanks to the skill and education and training of the wonderful health workers, they brought me back.”
Dr. Peter Crossno, an intensive care doctor and pulmonologist at Intermountain Healthcare, said he was there when Kearl was in cardiac arrest. “Fortunately, we were there in time to recover,” said Crossno.
Kearl, who said he was a Christian, said he had “some incredible spiritual experiences” and “many Guardian Angels” guarded him during his hospital stay.
“I’ve had help from the other side more than once,” he said. “I had answers to prayers, sometimes almost immediately.”
He once prayed for help when he needed to go to the bathroom. He pressed a button to call a nurse, but he couldn’t speak and it was urgent.
“Can you imagine the humiliation of getting dirty in your bed and being unable to do anything about it?” Said Kearl. “They took care of all of my needs, everything.”
Chained to his hospital bed, Kearl said he “got very good at counting ceiling tiles.” He recalls that there were 55 tiles in his first ICU room. Otherwise, he mainly thought of survival, he said.
Recovery from trauma
Before contracting COVID-19, “I really had no” previous illnesses, Kearl said. “I was pretty healthy. I didn’t take any medication every day. And that has changed. “
One of his biggest frustrations at the hospital was “I couldn’t walk” or “couldn’t even get up,” said Kearl. He also tasted no food or water for almost seven months and was instead fed through a tube-feeding tube.
It was “a blessing” when he was finally able to eat mashed potatoes again, he said, “because I was told that I might never be able to eat and drink normally again.”
Being in his own bed again, “being able to lay my wife next to me and hold my hand,” healed Kearl.
“I get emotional very easily,” and Kearl said he learned, “this is a release from the trauma” he has been through. He was diagnosed with PTSD, he said.
Kearl’s case is, according to Dr. Crossno unusual, especially considering how serious it is to be in intensive care.
The “223 days in hospital is an incredibly long time. It’s probably the longest I can remember in recent times that I’ve had a patient in intensive care, ”he said.
There were times when “a lot of us looked around the room and said, ‘I don’t know if this will be it for him or not,'” Crossno said. But Kearl was determined.
“I don’t think either of us would wish that to anyone,” said Crossno. “It’s incredibly difficult to survive.”
(Intermountain Healthcare) Thomas Kearl, in a wheelchair, leaves Intermountain Medical Center with his family on August 24, 2021, after 223 days in the hospital after contracting COVID-19.
The COVID-19 vaccines were not available to the general public when Kearl was hospitalized in January. After rehabilitation, Kearl’s first stop, when allowed to go on trips, was to get his first shot.
“I have until September 16” [for the second shot], and I will thank you very much to get my vaccination, ”said Kearl. “Because it will save me.”
On his way home from the hospital last month, his family drove him past dozens of “We love Thom” signs that people – some of which he didn’t even know – placed in their gardens to show their support. At the weekend, neighbors and friends stood in his garden with banners welcoming him.
Kearl said he was grateful to all of the doctors, nurses and medical staff, as well as his family, who helped him through his illness and recovery. “I want to live,” he said.
(Trent Nelson | The Salt Lake Tribune) We Love Thom, a sign in Salt Lake City on Thursday, September 2, 2021.
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