To Get Back Home is a medical thriller of the first order, a true story of triumph and survival over astronomical odds, as an otherwise healthy and active young woman fights for her life after being suddenly stricken by a rare neurological disorder, Acute Demyelinating Encephalomyelitis (ADEM). To Get Back Home takes you on a harrowing journey as Ms. Ford forges her way back from a coma and quadriplegia, desperate to return to her family and young children. Her life seemed perfect until Wendy Ford was stricken and rendered comatose within days, and then, after a tense weeks-long battle for survival, quadriplegic. At one of the most renowned hospitals in the world, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, the Harvard teaching hospital known as "Harvard with a heart," her doctors ─ Harvard Medical School professors all ─ were helpless to diagnose and treat her, hard as they tried, as the rare malady confounded even them and she slipped further and further away. Initially, she was not expected to live, or, ultimately, to walk again or recover her prior intellectual abilities. Doctors have referred to hers as a miracle case, but the mysteries persist to this day. "An engaging, moving memoir that unravels at a quick pace. Straightforward and honest, emotional realism is achieved with quiet dignity, making it all the more poignant..." -Kate Darnton, Contributing Editor, PublicAffairs "Impeccably done and so fascinating. Sometimes you read something that's really important and you have to at least try to get it out there..." -Philip Spitzer, Literary Agent, NY, NY "A poignant narrative...I was spellbound. You are a role model for your life-affirming persistence..." -Weston Boer, Writer and Historian "Immensely valuable to anyone in the clergy as they help people through dire straits." -The Rev. Susan Flanders, Chevy Chase, MD "Very moved by your manuscript, which I read from cover to cover, at once...Remarkable..." -Diana Barrett, Harvard Business School "Your very desire to live and not die was itself a kind of prayer." -Professor Kimberley Patton, Harvard Divinity School Wendy Chapin Ford graduated from the University of Michigan and worked as a corporate financial writer for many years in Boston. She has served on the Board of Overseers, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. She lives in Massachusetts with her family. To Get Back Home is her first published work. To Get Back Home A Mysterious Disease: A Fight for Life By Wendy Chapin Ford iUniverse, Inc. Copyright © 2009 Wendy Chapin Ford All right reserved. ISBN: 978-1-4401-9916-5 Contents Chapter One: BG, I can't walk!..........................1Chapter Two: To Beth Israel.............................5Chapter Three: The Awakening............................50Chapter Four: Out of the Fire...........................71Chapter Five: Impossible Memories.......................75Chapter Six: Pleasant, but Confused.....................79Chapter Seven: To Get Back Home.........................84Chapter Eight: In Search of Meaning.....................135Chapter Nine: Prayer....................................143Epilogue One............................................153Epilogue Two............................................155My Magnificent Hospitals................................157Photographs.............................................158Acknowledgments.........................................159Notes...................................................161About the Cover Art.....................................165 Chapter One "B.G., I can't walk!" On Friday evening, May 15, 1998, I enjoyed supper with my family in the seaside garden of our home on the North Shore of Boston. My husband, Bruce (a.k.a., B.G.), and I had lived there for ten years. After spending the day in Boston, we had been determined to put some unpleasant business behind us during a delightful al fresco lunch at Maison Robert, our favorite restaurant in the city. The weather was beautiful, a clear sunny day in spring with enough warmth to hint of summer, our favorite season, which was just around the corner. That evening back at our old colonial home, we enjoyed the warm spring breezes as our two young children, Westy and Lindsay, frolicked in the garden. Watching the sailboats in the outer harbor, we laughed and talked as we looked forward to another summer of sailing and tennis in Massachusetts and Maine. B.G. and I had sailed together for years, beginning before we were married. But it was always fresh-a time to appreciate life and reconnect. I never tired of seeing Bruce's piercing blue eyes against the backdrop of the sea. On the water, it seemed as though we were always smiling. It was ever so beautiful, and we felt so alive out there in the elements. Then, of course, we brought the children into it, and they, too, developed a love of sailing and the sea. In the end, I remember feeling very lucky that day. The children were happ