Going to the Mat : Poway Wrestling Coach Fights Toughest Match of His Life

Fatigued and nauseated, Bill Palmer thought maybe he just had the flu.

Hours later, Palmer’s low moans belied the pain screaming through his body. Soreness had lodged itself deep in his bones, and, suddenly, purple blotches started forming on his arm.

He was rushed to the hospital and met by a barrage of emergency room nurses, orderlies, and doctors--all shouting.

“This man is in critical condition!” “What is his medical history?” “What happened to him?”

Palmer’s wife, Debra, shrank at the questions.

Didn’t they know?

Doctors didn’t know exactly what had cut off Palmer’s circulation, but they knew that if it continued, he wouldn’t make it. Large black skin patches mottled his face and body now. Doctors gave him 20 minutes to live.

Palmer, 38, was a healthy, strapping wrestling coach, school teacher and father of three when he was stricken last year by meningococcemia, an illness so rare there have been just 50 cases reported in the nation since 1967 . The often fatal disease attacks the blood and shuts down the body’s circulatory system.

Palmer fought against time, and outlasted doctors’ dour predictions. A year later, he is one of a select few who have beaten the odds, doctors say. But his survival is not without a toll.

Both legs were amputated at the upper shin. Gone, too, are three fingers on his left hand. Half his body’s skin has been grafted to repair infected areas. A secondary infection scoured his knee joints of cartilage. And, a portion of his back musculature was cut away and used to rebuild his left knee.

In less than one year, he underwent 40 operations and major skin grafts.

“We would get through one set of operations and breath a sigh of relief,” Palmer said. “Then, Wham-O! A whole new set of mountains to climb.”

Despite the grueling schedule of operations and the inestimable emotional toll, Palmer has maintained his resolve to return to teaching.

He is preparing to resume classes at Poway High School in September. And, to the disbelief of medical experts, Palmer is going to go in walking.

Palmer was fitted for prosthetic legs about a month and a half after surgery in October. Within three weeks, he was walking unassisted. The feat left his doctors, relatives, friends--anyone who had followed his plight--flabbergasted.

“I never thought I would see it, but he’s doing it. He’s walking,” said Dr. Harold Forney, Palmer’s orthopedic surgeon at Sharp Memorial Hospital.

Debra Palmer said: “He’s that kind of person--just can’t take no for an answer.”

Meningococcemia is contracted through an airborne bacteria, much like the flu, said Dr. Harold Forney, one of the physicians who treated Palmer during the past year. Although carriers of the disease are common--some estimates are as high as one-third of the population--a slim percentage of those actually become afflicted, according to medical journals. An unidentifiable deficiency in the immune system allows the germ to take hold, Forney said.

During the original 87-day death watch after Palmer fell sick, huge patches of skin died due to poor circulation. Damage was done when oxygen-carrying blood hit artery blocks on the way to the skin and extremities.

Until recently, little was known about how to treat the disease, Forney said. Experimental drugs have proven somewhat effective at stimulating circulation and ridding the body of the bacteria. But treatment carries its own toll. Side effects, including dangerously high blood pressure and susceptibility to opportunistic infections, are the disease’s secondary hazards. Those side effects also have claimed lives.

Early on, Palmer’s disease was so unforgiving, and the physical devastation so complete, that words of encouragement were difficult to come by.

Thinking that the children should see their father before he died, Debra Palmer reluctantly brought Sara, 9, Scott, 6, and Justin 4, to visit the hospital, even though she worried the children’s lasting impression of Bill Palmer would be of a man whose skin looked as if it had been set on fire. Palmer’s face and body had been blackened by scabs and scar tissue.

With some trepidation, Justin inched into the hospital room and looked in horror. The boy pointed to a family portrait on the night stand and said to his mother: “I want Daddy to be like that again.”

There were wrenching moments that came without words.

It was June, three months since Palmer had last seen himself. En route to the hospital’s physical therapy room, Palmer caught a glimpse of himself in a mirror.

The image was haunting. Before, he was 6-feet, 2-inches tall, and a muscular 220 pounds. After surgery, he was 5-feet tall, 90 pounds lighter, and his beard, mustache and shock of red hair were gone. Across his body and face, rope-like scars had formed like tethers keeping his skin intact. He returned to the privacy of his hospital room where, alone, he sat in front of the bathroom mirror and cried.

Palmer’s recovery has continued to be a looping roller coaster ride of physical setbacks and triumphs. Opportunities to say no, and quit the ride have been many.

Four months after the first series of amputations took place, Palmer was readmitted to UC San Diego.

Doctors advised further amputation when wounds from the original operations failed to heal. Exposed for months, the joints in his knees became acutely infected. Palmer also was told there were complications with his hands.

Palmer opposed additional amputations. Removing his knees would have all but eliminated the chance of walking with the aid of prosthetics. The doctors persisted, Palmer said.

“One week, they came to my room with their little entourage behind them,” Palmer said. “Without any emotion, very matter-of-fact like, they said I was going to lose the rest of my left leg. The next day, they came back and said my right knee had to go, too. The next day, it was the rest of my hand. Those things tumbled off the doctor’s tongue like it wasn’t anything. To me, it was everything.”

Palmer said it was one of the few periods during the entire ordeal when his confidence faltered.

“I had everything to lose--every future walk on the beach I wanted to take with my kids. Every bicycle ride. Every chance to play catch with my sons. . . . Not to belittle how bad my situation had been, but until that week, I was really doing all right. I thought I was going to get used to my new life. Then, all of a sudden, they wanted to whittle my body down to nothing.”

After resisting warnings for several weeks, Palmer rebuffed his doctors at UCSD and consulted Forney, an amputation specialist. Palmer transferred to Sharp Memorial Hospital, where Forney gave him a 1-in-1000 chance of avoiding radical amputation.

“That’s what I wanted to hear,” Palmer said. “Something positive.”

Sterile baths in a bleaching solution and a host of antibiotics helped cleanse the infected areas. Palmer’s resolve did the rest. The battle began in September and seemingly ended three and a half months later. Come December, the infections were gone, and so was most of the cartilage in Palmer’s joints. But he kept his knees.

Palmer defied death but in doing so entered into a struggle with life. He adheres to a strict rehabilitation regimen and attends painful prostheses fittings each week.

Despite sometimes meteoric progress, the recovery has had many complications. On Tuesday, the night before he was scheduled for surgery to retool what is left of his left hand, another emergency struck. Palmer awoke with pain in his right leg. At dawn, he was feeling chills.

Debra Palmer rushed him, yet again, to the hospital, where he underwent surgery to remove newly infected tissue around his knee. The operation was successful. And Palmer, again, underwent intensive antibiotic treatment.

“All these twists and turns,” Debra Palmer said after the operation. “You wonder when they are going to stop.”

As the ordeal continues, relatives and friends are nearby to buoy Palmer’s hope. Debra Palmer still spends countless hours poring through medical journals, and talking to doctors, researchers and prosthetists, as she searches for the best treatment available. She took a leave of absence from her teaching job in the Poway School District to maintain a daily vigil at the hospital. She has patiently accompanied Bill Palmer through the paces.

The staff at Poway High School devised several ways to aid the Palmers. In an agreement with the teachers credit union, volunteer faculty members contributed $10 from each paycheck to a support fund. Two thirds of the 140-member staff participated; about $8,000 was collected in three months.

In May, two of Palmer’s friends organized a golf tournament and barbecue that netted $11,000 for the support fund. The Oaks North Golf Course in Rancho Bernardo donated greens fees, the school administration paid for steaks and chicken, friends of the family volunteered time to organize.

“People somehow were just eager to respond to a guy who doesn’t hang his head,” said Wayne Branstetter, a wrestling coach at Poway who organized the golf benefit. “Bill just fought and fought and fought. Those of us who saw what he was going through, we felt helpless a lot of the time. We all just wanted to give something back to him.”

The contributions will cover living expenses and help defray some of the medical costs not covered by insurance. In all, bills for medical treatment and rehabilitation have totaled more than $1.5 million, Debra Palmer said.

Another friend, DebbiEaster, who counsels students at Poway High School, said those who watched Bill’s struggle during the past year have been awe-struck by a man who suffered immeasurable pain, but refused to let the smile slip from his face.

“When they brought him home after the operations, I was scared to death to see him,” Easter said. “He was still extremely sick. I thought it was going to be hard to face him. But Bill was so enthusiastic, so set on beating this thing, that I couldn’t spend a second feeling sorry for him. I already knew what a terrific guy he was, but I had no idea of the depth of his strength.”

Easter offered to look after the Palmer children, taking them to swimming lessons and on outings with her two boys. She also posted a sign-up sheet in the faculty lounge to enlist volunteers to take turns preparing dinner for the Palmers. During the three months Palmer was in the hospital, various Poway High faculty members delivered dinner to the family’s home--everyday.

“When you have that many people pulling for you, it’s hard not to get better,” Palmer said.

When the chapter on meningococcemia comes to a close, Palmer said he will try to pick up where he left off. He said he wants no special treatment when he returns to school in September.

There will be inevitable changes, Palmer said. One he foresees is a limited role with the wrestling team. Palmer must content himself with being a fan, he said.

“I’m a hands-on coach,” Palmer said, describing the conditioning drills he once led: 4-mile runs with the team, calisthenics, weightlifting. “It wouldn’t feel right to try and coach without being able to get on the mat and train with the guys,” he said.

Wrestling team member, Ross Funches, 18, said he hopes his former coach will eventually “come back through”--a wrestling term for making a comeback.

“Coaching is about having the heart and lung power to hoot and holler a lot,” Funches said. “Coach Palmer has got that. I know he would have a good affect on the team.

“I can’t really describe it. It’s like there’s this electricity in everything he does now. When you meet him, you’ll know what I’m talking about. It seems like he’s getting everything he can out of life now.

“You see him and it’s like he’s saying: ‘Yeah! This is it!’ ”

Come back through.