PATRICK'S PEOPLE: Leonard Kazmierski is beating the odds

He didn’t win the lottery or find the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, but Leonard Kazmierski Jr., Pittsburg, is still a very lucky man.

“I’ve had two doctors tell me I’m lucky just to be alive,” said Kazmierski as he guided his power chair down the hall at Medicalodges Pittsburg.

As a bonus, he’s awake and alert, can breathe by himself and speak. He’s even walking with the help of a walker. Kazmierski has come a long way since September of 2010.

His problem started in 2010 with a little tingle in both feet.

“In two weeks it worked its way up to my waist,” he said.  “There was no pain at all, and that scared the h--- out of me.”

He went to a doctor who tentatively diagnosed the problem as a light case of Guillain Barre Syndrome.

Classified as an autoimmune disease, Guillain Barre causes the body to attack itself, specifically damaging the myelin sheaths around the nerves. Depending on the extend of the disease, which can be triggered by various infections or, rarely, by flu shots, it can cause muscle weakness, balance problems and/or paralysis. The condition can be life-threatening if the muscles controlling breathing and heart rate are affected.

The doctor prescribed the drug Lyrica for the condition. After taking one pill at the pharmacy and another later that night, Kazmierski woke up the next morning and found that the tingle was gone.

“I took Lyrica all through 2010, and then in September I got a flu shot,” Kazmierski said. “Five days later I woke up, got out of bed and my knees had turned to butter. The ER people had to come and I told them I thought I might have Guillain Barre. The next thing I remember, I woke up six weeks later in the Central Missouri State Hospital at Mt. Vernon.”

He learned that he had first been transported to Via Christi  Hospital, where he went into respiratory failure within 48 hours. After undergoing a tracheotomy and being placed on a ventilator, he was transferred to St. John’s Medical Center in Joplin,  then on to the Mt. Vernon facility.

“By the way, if anybody ever tells you that you don’t dream when you’re in a coma, yes, you do,” Kazmierski said. “I was having a good time floating around on white and green clouds.”

But he definitely did not have a good time after he woke up.

“As a result of having the sheaths stripped from all the millions and billions of nerve endings you have in your body, it is very painful to move, even to have somebody move your leg to re-position your body,” Kazmierski said. “The most painful things to me were sponge baths. I would cry because it felt like somebody was rubbing coarse sandpaper over my body.”

To add to his problems, he developed a blood clot in his leg and had pneumonia twice.

“My hair turned silver white, and I lost 40 pounds,” Kazmierski said. “I went from 180 to 140.”

He was also unable to speak, but one of his brothers wrote words and phrases on a board.

“He would point to them and I would shake my head yes or no,” Kazmierski said. “That’s how I communicated for a good six weeks, then I got the voice box, but they only let me keep it on so long because it would lower my oxygen level.”

He feared that his voice wouldn’t come back, but said that it’s actually stronger now than it was before his illness.

“I didn’t used to be able to yell very loud, but now I can yell like nobody’s business,” Kazmierski said.

He was in Mt. Vernon for three months, then was sent to the Joplin Health and Rehabilitation Center, where he was a patient from March 2011, to Jan. 31, 2012.
He’s now happy to be at Medicalodges Pittsburg.

“In Joplin it’s two to a room, and here it’s one to a room, and that’s all the difference in the world,” Kazmierski said. “I just didn’t feel at home there.”

Some Guillain Barre patients recover with few lasting ill effects, but he suspects he won’t be one of them.

“I have drop foot and can’t raise my foot,” he said. “My feet are still numb from the ankles down. I do have good movement in my arms, but I can’t touch the back of my head. I can dress and undress myself, which they taught me to do here at Medicalodge. They have good therapists here.”

Nevertheless, Kazmierski is eager to go back to independent living.

“I want to get out of here by the end of July,” he said. “I’m so sick of restrictions. It’s the lack of freedom. I had lived by myself for 35 to 40 years, and it’s just hard to be cooped up with other people.”

A former journalist, Kazmierski was an assistant sports editor, city reporter and news editor at the Pittsburg Morning Sun between 1962 and 1970 or 1971. He was also employed by the U.S. Census Bureau for several years.

“I still have what I think is a fairly bright head on my shoulders, and I’d like to use it for something,” he said.