Amazing perseverance

Cheryl Lewis has come to have a keen appreciation for the unexpected over the past nine months.

And perhaps she's learned to put a little more stock in her own abilities, too.

Because after a broken ankle took a jarring turn to medical complications like pneumonia, coma and paralysis, she knows full well it was as much herself as it was her committed loved ones and relentless health professionals who pushed her to the point where she can laugh, speak, and - after months of work - stand on her own two feet.

"It was hard," the 54-year-old confessed in her cozy room at Lacrosse Health and Rehabilitation Center, her world since early January. "I never believed (I would get this far)."

Sitting in a wheelchair before her discharge on Friday, she was surrounded by the whole team: Her two daughters, her boyfriend and her mother, who had followed her from facility to facility during her long recovery, as well as Lacrosse Physical Therapist Assistant Kelli Westhafer.

"It was (a huge undertaking)," Westhafer said of Lewis' recovery. "I really had to push for her. I could see a future in mind. I really felt like some people were giving up, and I said 'No. We're going to do this.' And we did it."

It all began simply, with a broken ankle last September when Lewis took a misstep off a sidewalk.

After surgery she went to a private health care center for physical therapy, where after a month she suffered a negative reaction to antibiotics.

"I went up there that morning and went in, and she was sitting on the side of the bed saying, 'I can't breathe, I can't breathe,'" remembered Joyce Geboe, Lewis' mother.

The health center staff dismissed it as an anxiety attack, Lewis said, but when anxiety medication had no affect, she was rushed to the emergency room at Kootenai Medical Center.

"The paramedics said if we had waited another hour, I wouldn't have survived," Lewis said.

Doctors discovered Lewis had pneumonia, and her lungs were riddled with holes from MRSA staff infection.

While in the hospital, Lewis, who had a history of kidney problems, also suffered kidney failure that was spurred by her illness.

"She was a water bed, her skin was so full of liquid," said Lewis' daughter Angela Munson, 34.

To expedite healing, doctors induced a coma. Later attempts to bring Lewis out of it, however, were unsuccessful.

The whole family was brought in for the bad news: Lewis wasn't going to make it, and it was time to say their good-byes.

"It was the deepest, darkest void," said Lewis' younger daughter, Jennifer Mayer, 25. "She's the center of all our lives. For her to leave us, everything would be gone. We can't get on without our mom."

They didn't have to.

Thirty days into the coma, Lewis woke up.

Unfortunately, she woke up paralyzed, due to illness induced neuropathy.

Doctors didn't know what to predict, though there were doubts she would ever walk again.

"Doctors said people weren't supposed to live through what she did, so the neuropathy was new to them," Munson said.

Lewis was moved to the intensive care unit at Northern Idaho Advanced Care Hospital, where she struggled with psychosis brought on by her illness.

"We gave her her meds, because she wouldn't take anything. She thought they were trying to poison her through the IVs," Mayer remembered.

During her stay in ICU, however, she showed signs of overcoming the paralysis.

When she was brought to Lacrosse this January, only her left side had any strength.

But her physical therapy assistant had a plan.

Westhafer had helped a patient with brittle bones like Lewis' walk again, and she was convinced it could happen again.

"We put her (Lewis) on a weight bearing program. It seemed like we kept having setbacks, she had gall bladder surgery, then dialysis," Westhafer said. "My God, we still made it."

After taking on one small goal at a time, Westhafer said, Lewis can now get out of bed on her own and make it short distances with a walker, though right now she covers most ground in a wheelchair.

This means she can live independently, Mayer said. Lewis' daughters and boyfriend, Terry Harman, had prepared for the opposite after helping tend to her during her illness.

"We congregated at every facility," Mayer said. "They would recognize us coming down the hall."

Lewis still has to get a kidney transplant, but she looks forward to a vacation to the Oregon coast with her family.

And maybe, with more work, Westhafer said, she can do more on her feet.

"She may be limited to a wheelchair," Westhafer said. "But it doesn't hurt to try (more). It's early yet."