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Spear recalls brush with
death in Cuba
Bangor
Daily News. ME,
May 9, 2005.
NOBLEBORO - Inside a tidy ranch home high
on a ridge, Maine Agriculture Commissioner
Robert Spear sits on a blue sofa, his right
arm swathed in bandages and resting high
on a pillow. He's looking out a picture
window into his vegetable fields across
the street. Pounded by rain, some of the
fields are full of puddles while others
are tented in plastic.
"That's where I'd be if this hadn't
happened," he lamented Saturday, referring
to his arm. "I'd be helping with the
planting. It is so frustrating staying down."
Spear is recovering from a near-death bout
with septic shock, which began as an innocent
bump to the elbow in a shower while on a
Maine trade mission to Cuba last month.
Within hours, Spear had collapsed on his
hotel room floor and was in a Cuban hospital
in critical condition.
Talking publicly of his ordeal for the
first time, Spear appears weak and pale.
He has lost 15 pounds on an already slender
frame. He recognizes that he has a long
way to go to full recovery and acknowledges
how close to death he came.
"It got to the point that I would
close my eyes and see visions, things I
had never seen before," he said. "I
saw vapors in the room."
Spear said his experience in Cuba began
on April 1, when he and a contingent from
Maine flew out of Montreal for Cuba to secure
agriculture and forestry contracts.
While staying at a hotel in Havana, Spear
had a nurse check a slow-healing wound on
his hand and she continued to check on his
progress. Although the hand wound apparently
was not connected to his illness, it was
that nurse's diligence that saved his life.
Spear recalled how he was preparing to
attend a major dinner on April 4.
"I went in the shower and in trying
to keep my hand from getting wet, I hit
my elbow on the shower wall," he said.
"By the time I got out of the shower,
my arm was swelling up."
Spear did not realize that he had nicked
the skin on his elbow, allowing the deadly
bacteria, staph haemolyticus, to enter his
body. One of dozens of varieties of staph
bacteria, haemolyticus has been called a
"super bug" because of its resistance
to standard antibiotic therapy.
Staph infections can be as mild as to cause
sore throats and as deadly as the infamous
"flesh-eating bacteria." Spear's
variety is among the most dangerous and
least responsive to medication.
After his shower, Spear attended the dinner.
"It was a long, drawn-out affair with
about eight courses," he said. Halfway
through the meal, Spear felt quite ill and
was having chills. "I really thought
it was the food."
He returned after dinner to his hotel room.
By then, he was shaking. "I didn't
tell anyone because I still believed I had
eaten something that disagreed with me,"
he said. "I never connected it with
my swelling arm."
Spear shook all night. He became violently
ill in the morning, later felt a bit better
but was incredibly weak. He told other trade
mission members to proceed without him while
he spent the day in bed.
In the afternoon, when Spear tried to open
the door for the nurse who had been checking
his hand wound, he collapsed. Regaining
he senses, he realized he was so weak he
couldn't lift his arms. Fellow travelers
carried him to a taxi and he was rushed,
semiconscious, to a nearby hospital.
It was discovered that the bacteria in
his arm were giving off "super toxins,"
he said. "I started going downhill
fast." His blood pressure plummeted
to 50/37 (normal is 120/80.) His vascular
system starting shutting down and his kidneys
were failing.
Back in Maine, Janet Spear was notified
that her husband was near death. She got
the call at the family's Nobleboro home,
where her two sons happened to be that day.
"We were told to get to Cuba immediately,"
she said.
Her first call was to Gov. John Baldacci.
He got the ball rolling with U.S. officials
in Guantanamo Bay who were preparing to
airlift Spear to U.S. soil.
Spear, who was in and out of consciousness,
said his medical attention and airlift are
pretty much a blur. But he reports he was
well cared for.
"They have the highest education there
but not the latest equipment," he noted.
"Things were pretty basic. I can't
say enough about my care, however. The Cubans
saved my life. There is no doubt about that."
Spear said it was his impression that he
got better care because he was an American
official. Pedro Alvarez, the top Cuban agricultural
official, stayed by Spear's side the entire
time he was hospitalized.
On April 8, after five days in Cuban hospitals,
Spear was flown in a Learjet operated by
a St. Petersburg, Fla.-based private aviation
firm to Jackson Memorial Hospital at the
University of Miami.
Greeting her husband upon his arrival,
Janet Spear was shocked by what she saw.
"His eyes were yellow. His body was
so swollen, huge with fluid," she described.
"His arm was three times the size of
his regular arm. It looked like a monster's
arm."
"I couldn't even be happy that I was
back on U.S. soil," the commissioner
said. "I was so sick that just getting
help was all I was interested in. I was
so weak that I couldn't even communicate."
Janet Spear said the pockets of infection
were so severe that her spouse's arm was
tomato red. "It was like the infection
was eating him," she said, adding the
hospital staff informed her that it was
the worst case of cellulitis (inflammation
of the connective tissue) they had ever
seen.
She and the couple's two sons, Terry and
Jeff, were prepared for the worst.
"It never crossed my mind that I would
die," Spear said, looking back on the
crisis from the comfort of his living room.
In an attempt to halt the infection's spread,
a Miami team operated on Spear's arm. He
continued to receive massive doses of antibiotic
cocktails and was surrounded by five or
six doctors continually.
Spear was stabilized and returned to his
Nobleboro farm a week later, only to be
re-hospitalized at Miles Memorial Hospital
in Damariscotta when the infection flared
again.
Now, at home, Spear is still extremely
weak. A few phone calls tucker him out.
"I've never been sick before,"
he said. "That's why I'm discouraged."
He said it will be weeks before he can
go back to work even part time, and it could
easily be months before he is strong enough
for a full day's work.
Spear did clear a hurdle Saturday, ending
a daily regimen of two massive doses of
antibiotics. He hopes his condition will
remain stable over the next few days - a
sign he is finally on the road to recovery.
In character, reflecting back on his harrowing
experience and the Maine trade mission,
Spear said: "It was all worth it, though.
We got some wonderful contracts."
His wife just shook her head.
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