I’m writing this page on behalf of my high school sweetheart, wife of almost 50 years, and love of my life, Teresa Bruns.

About that title. I kept bouncing back and forth between “Victim of local healthcare system”, “You can’t make this stuff up”, and a twist on the old joke “what’s the difference between a fairy tale and a 911 dispatcher story. The fairy tale starts with “once upon a time”, and the 911 dispatcher story starts with “you ain’t gonna believe this s**t”. I’m going with this last one so you’ll keep reading. It’s accurate!

I’ll give a brief history of our past, then get right to the nitty gritty. While in high school in southern California, we met at an ice rink near Disneyland. Unknowingly, we both worked in different areas at Disneyland. I was at the rink because my brother and I were training for speed skating. She was there so she and her girlfriends could grab the sailors on shore leave by the belt loops and spin them around on the ice.

Things never changed. So…we got married in 1975!

We lived a very exciting and fulfilling life back then. As I said, that girl was fearless. Whether it came to test driving a new dirt bike in her work clothes, to racing our Honda Odyssey in the dirt, to running our drag boat at high speeds, or off roading, she was all in! She was that way in everything in life.

On to more recent history, and the reasons for this request. After deciding to move to Missouri in 1979, Teresa got a job at a WalMart store setting up their very first bar code scanning registers. One of the local store managers assisting in this process liked her performance and work ethics, so he hired her for his store. She later became a department manager, then lead for the front area, including the cash office. I was hired on as a driver in 1986, when she transferred with me and worked in the distribution center in Iowa. This is actually where things started to go south. Some medical issues started popping up. She was sort of forced into an early hysterectomy, then was diagnosed with Lupus. She had worked her way up to Regional Training Manager by the time we left in 1997 to take care of family back in Missouri.

She was fortunate enough to meet Sam Walton many times, and even got to fly with the Walton family to the Annual Shareholders meeting one year. We both loved working for WalMart, and they treated us well.

Back in Missouri, we bought her mom out of her half of their Title Company, and improved the business dramatically. We caught our new partner in some lies, and suspected something hinky was going on. Long story short, we sold our half to another business associate, and took off to the Mayo Clinic to try and find relief for her Lupus. After a week and a half, they came back and told her whatever she had, it wasn’t Lupus. After 12 years of steroids and low dose chemo, that was a real gut punch. The next gut punch was when we realized our former business partners were stealing from us through accounts left open for title policies. They actually opened several new offices, and were nice enough to pay for all the new carpeting, telephone systems, computers, bonuses, etc. out of our account by forging our signatures. We never got any of our money back, but they did the same thing to the Title Insurance companies, absconding with $8.1 million in escrow money. The FBI got involved then, and they both went to federal prison.

I’ll speed this up a bit, as I don’t want to bore you. Returning from the Mayo Clinic, we thought about what was next for us. She had always wanted to be a 911 dispatcher. She had the critical thinking skills and could multi-task like nobodies business, so she’d be perfect for that. We ended up wanting to let her recoup a bit, and try to lean on my skill sets to make a living. We opened up a Hot Rod shop, which was my passion, but she jumped right in and ran the business while I “played” with the customers.

After several successful years, and lots of hard work, we decided to accept an offer from one of our loyal customers to buy the business. Her mom was gravely ill, Teresa was spending a lot of time caring for her, and it was just time. Her mom passed the next month. Ironically, she got a call from the police department at her moms funeral to come in to interview for the 911 position. She loved this job more than anything she’s ever done.

Eventually, they moved the 911 center to county, but Teresa stayed on to take care of her “kids” as a police clerk. While working at the PD, she started having breathing problems. She was misdiagnosed for 6 months, with the local doctor telling her she had pneumonia. Her oxygen levels would be fine when they checked with her sitting in the exam room. She told them she’d be out of breath before she could get to the car, so they walked her around the nurses station, then they checked her again. And then called an ambulance. She was later diagnosed with BOOP, a rare lung disease usually fatal within 5 years, and had to be on oxygen 24/7. The police department was very accommodating and allowed her to work with an oxygen concentrator and a 50’ hose. The local pulmonologist Googled what to do for her (right in front of us!) He just kept increasing her doses of steroids…until she went into diabetic trauma. Her blood sugars, with no history of diabetes, got to 905 in the ER. She is now insulin dependent. This is when we first started going to Barnes Hospital in St. Louis, and the first time they saved her life! She later beat the odds and not only was in remission, but was able to get off of oxygen. Remarkable woman!

A couple years later, a nice older gentleman who had just purchased some property and cleaned out a shed, bought in some items he found for the medicine drop off box. He had some pills, powder, and assorted items to drop off. He got most of the pills in the box, but was struggling with a larger, old brown glass bottle with a rusty old lid on it. My wife asked one of the other clerks to go assist him, so she took the bottle and brought it into dispatch. She asked what she should do with it, and my wife told her to take it back to the officer in charge of the drop off. She ran back to the other end of the PD and showed him, and he asked what it was. Well, she did the smart thing, licked her finger to wipe off the label, and said “SODIUM CYANIDE”. Of course, everything went on lockdown. Everyone was evacuated….except Teresa and the other clerk. The fire guys in their hazmat suits explained in their best Darth Vader voices, that she would have to strip down buck naked, wrap in a blanket, put all of her clothes, shoes, purse, etc. in the bin to be burned. My wife told her that everything would be OK. The firefighter asked my wife “did you hear what we told her? .....you’re next!!!” She replied “oh, hell no”, but the Chief convinced her otherwise. They both went out in the frigid January weather to get hosed and scrubbed down.

Shortly after this happened, Teresa slammed her thumb in one of those 4’ wide solid oak doors at the PD. Workmen’s Comp really messed this one up. To summarize, after a staph infection, IV antibiotics, 3 surgeries (infection got in the bone), and pins and screws, she thought she was better. I’ll come back to this later.

While recouping from some bad days after her 3rd surgery, she called in sick, but needed to get some paperwork back to the PD. As we were getting ready to go, she asked do I look yellow to you? I told her she did a little bit. When we got to the PD, under the squad room lights, she kind of looked like a banana. Her Corporal said she needed to get to urgent care, which we did. They hurried us over to the ER, who after some testing, got us a room. Diagnoses: Pancreatic Cancer. We had four doctors (2 surgeons) tell us there was nothing they could do, just go home and live out your bucket list, you’ve got less than 12 months. Back to Barnes in St. Louis. After meeting with all the Fellows, the gray haired doctors came in and announced they had a plan. First, 6 months of chemo to prevent growth and possibly shrink the tumor. Then, the Whipple Procedure, which is a 9 hour surgery, 9 days in the hospital, and 9 weeks recovery. This remarkable woman took on a very tough chemo regimen, appropriately called 5-FU, with very minimal time off of work at the PD, some time off for surgical recovery, then had to go back on chemo because they didn’t get “enough” of a clean margin during the surgery. She worked through most of the second round of chemo, but it eventually got to be too much, and was forced to retire in June of 2018.

She was handling the chemo OK, but other problems were developing. She was losing her sense of balance, causing multiple falls. She was having constant brain fog, and muscle tremors were getting worse. She had severe edema going on, causing rapid weight gain. Nobody here in our local healthcare system would listen. Her primary doctor was worthless, her chemo doctor only wanted to check for neuropathy in her feet, since the chemo can cause that. She insisted it was a balance problem because she could lean forward and not be able to stop. She would get dizzy twisting her head, and standing up getting out of bed, she would just fall over.

I started doing my own research on balance (with reputable sites, not iwannabeadoctor.com) and came up with some remarkable stuff. There’s a horrible drug called Gentamicin that can cause permanent inner ear damage, even with one dose, even when administered properly. Many people are totally debilitated by this drug for the rest of their lives.

Now, remember in between the lung disease and the pancreatic cancer, we had the smashed thumb? Remember the IV antibiotics? That was not Gentamicin that was prescribed to her. But, about 4 weeks into getting mail order antibiotic syringes each week, I was unloading the new shipment and rotating new stock with the old stock in the refrigerator, and yelled to my wife STOP!!!. The home health nurse was there that day changing her bandage on her PIC line and got freaked out. The previous weeks delivery (which looked identical to the prior weeks) WAS FOR SOME GUY IN KANSAS TO SHOOT INTO HIS BLADDER CATHETER!!! AND….it was Gentamicin.

She had already injected several doses in her IV. This drug can be administered by IV, but with 5MG pushed per liter of saline over 30 minutes to 2 hours. She was pushing all 15MG at once straight into her heart.

We contacted the mail order pharmacy and told them about the mistake. They said “you should be fine” and asked us to quickly mail the other guys drugs back to them. We didn’t think much of it back then. When we started seeing all of these side effects, the doctor would just say “it’s the chemo” to all of her inquiries. We didn’t realize that she had 80% of the 2 pages of side effects for Gentamicin listed on the Mayo Clinic’s website until much later.

A few weeks ago, she fell again. I couldn’t get her up so I called for an ambulance. They took her into ER and focused primarily on the edema. We had doctors coming in, with no testing, and just blurting out that she had stomach cancer. Another one insisted she had cirrhosis of the liver. They were all fighting over it being their specialty. It was literally like me, me, me, pick me!

We ended up spending the week from hell there. She had a roommate that kept kicking over her tray table scattering everything, everywhere. She would pull off her oxygen, triggering alarms, get out of bed, triggering alarms, was talking to people who weren’t there, and trying to rescue the dogs outside the window….on the roof…..on the 7th floor. Teresa got no sleep for 5 days, so we told them to either move her out, or knock her out. They came in later and gave her dilaudid, and knocked her out for a day and a half……MY WIFE, NOT THE ROOMATE!!! We just hoped they would not kill her long enough to let us get to Barnes Hospital again.

We did make it to Barnes, and are waiting on the team that saved her before to decide on a game plan. Her pancreatic cancer has spread to her liver, and we are deciding on treatment options. They were also able to get her into the Balance & Dizziness Clinic for thorough testing. Her inner ears are both fried, with the left ear having issues with the “crystals”. We are waiting to hear from them, although they confirmed my research that most of this damage is permanent and irreversible. There is some hope with therapy for the crystals issue. Hopefully it will help prevent some of these kinds of falls!

The next two were the following day, faceplanting in parking lot.

We have always been the ones to help others, helping financially, helping with a place to live, and overall general support. Now we feel like our world is collapsing around us. My reason for writing this page is to make life a little more comfortable for someone who deserves it more than anyone I’ve known in my 68 years on earth. Our medical expenses have skyrocketed, even with, especially with Medicare. And now, we’ll be starting new treatments and check ups in St. Louis, making the 200-mile trip regularly. They have referred us to a clinic for vestibular therapy in St. Louis as well.

UPDATE: As of a few weeks ago, she was back in the hospital. Her blood pressure dropped too low for the home health people to feel comfortable. They were working on that issue, as well as IV diuretics for more edema issues. They have also found she has an infected parotid gland in her jaw and giving IV antibiotics for that. This infection blocks her saliva ducts, causing the dry mouth she thought was caused by all of the medicines she is prescribed. Now they are saying her liver has been damaged from all these mishaps over the years, and that’s what is causing the edema, which is causing the low blood pressure, which is causing the cognitive issues, not necessarily in that order. In the meantime, they have released her to a physical rehab facility where the hope is to get her strong enough to start chemo again. They also have a certified vestibular therapist (inner ear) to help with that problem.

We are just looking for something positive to happen in her life. We would love to not have to worry about the mounting medical bills, and be able to afford our upcoming trips to the hospital in St. Louis, and not have to worry about monetary issues.

We'd like to ask all the folks who have been victims of incompetent health care , or had to travel hundreds of miles to get excellent health care, to donate.

All she really wants to do, is get back to fishing and relaxing like this!

We’re not on Facebook or other social media because, well, we’re old….and she worked for the police department! We don’t have any kind of social media following to count on, so any help sharing her story would be appreciated! Thank you, and God Bless!!!

I LOST MY GIRL LAST WEEK, AND I'M CRUSHED. BECAUSE OF THANKSGIVING SCHEDULING CONFLICTS, WE COULDN'T HAVE A SERVICE, JUST A VIEWING. I WANT TO HAVE AN AWESOME CELEBRATION OF LIFE FOR HER AWESOME LIFE. PLEASE READ OUR STORY.

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN AND READ ALL THE UPDATES, LAST ONE FIRST!