Many here may remember Paul Roussin from the FSX Beta Team. Paul is the author of GammaPro which is by far the best screen recording software.

Paul was diagnosed with terminal cancer not long ago and we lost him for a few minutes the other day.

Here's the transcript of his email to me.
 

 

Feel free to pass on.

 

What a birthday party I had, Important people from all over Syracuse come to my party.

As Al said I passed out standing up. It was about 5:30AM and I got off the couch to go to bed. As soon as I stood up everything turned brown and I felt myself in free fall. The timing of passing out was the time it took for my retinas to fade into darkness (perhaps 250 milliseconds???). The brown color was the filtering of the light through the blood of my eyelids. I have no recollection of hitting the floor.

I woke up later lying next to the top of the staircase staring into the stairwell wondering where I was. I have no idea how I got there unless I tumbled over the end of the couch. There was a picture on the wall of a vase of flowers and I realized I was in Kim’s house. I was laying on top of my left arm and had to roll on my right side to free my arm. I could not get up nor could I yell loud enough to awaken Kim(no air).

I finally maneuvered my feet down two steps of the stairs and used the railings to stand up. It was a frantic move to reach my bed having to use the tricks from childhood of falling forward. I made it to bed and laid down on my left side and went to sleep; bad move I should have gone to the hospital, but I had no idea of the trouble I was in.

Kim came by about 9:30 and I told her why all the lights were left on and apologized for vomiting on her rug. Later she called the Oncology center asking for advice and they told her to dial 911 or I would die.
At the emergency room things got really bad I began gasping for air not getting any because of the breaths being too shallow and I began dry vomiting every breath. The people in the emergency room saw me and respectfully turned away figuring I was in my death throes and was leaving. However I rolled over onto my left side and my breathing settled down and the vomiting reflex stopped. It was a very terrible moment.

The ER doctor asked if I had urinated at home lying on the floor and I said yes I was soaked(that has never happened before). He asked if I defecated and I said yes. He said I had died and the oxygen starved brain had stopped sending and receiving signals to and from the body. I was medically dead. He has no idea how I came back except that the fall may have moved the blood clot allowing blood into my lungs again. He also tried to figure out why laying on my left side was helping me to stay alive but said it has to be allowing blood into my left lung.

Kim, Al and Trudy came in later and I feel bad for the frenzy they must have witnessed. I was too busy fighting for air to be scared but they must have gone through hell as the ER was Helter Skelter.

The ER doctor decided to cut through all the procedural steps and relied heavily on his experience that I must have had a blood clot which was still blocking my breathing. He rushed me through a CT scan and they found one of the largest clots ever. It was so massive that it could not enter the lungs but had completely sealed them off except for the subsequent leakage that allowed me to live. Then he gave me the TPA medicine which broke up the clot. Later that night I noticed I could lay on my back and still breath. http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/007089.htm

Apparently this made lots of gossip and I had several heart doctors pass by to see if I was really alive. No one could believe anyone could have survived such a massive attack. I am called the Miracle Child. There were many quizzes testing to see if I had suffered brain tissue damage but I seemed to be fine. I will leave other details out,

Alfred came by every day and it was really helpful to see him. Trips to the hospital are not fun but he was there,

I did not see any white lights nor dancing ladies in white dresses running through fields of grain, I was gone and further with a dead brain there was no mechanism to record anything; I will never be able to remember hitting the floor. Perhaps if Hollywood offered a few million dollars I could yell out, “Oh! Wait! I remember something!”.

There was absolutely no pain at all, it was just as if the power went off in the middle of the night and came back on later; that was all. It was a beautiful death in that sense.

The clot was caused by the tumor which by controlling the liver alters the body chemistry and makes clotting in the legs highly probable which makes me ask why I was not placed on blood thinners to start with. Perhaps things were bad enough without adding yet more complications.

They brought me to surgery to put what they called filters into my returning veins. Because of my low blood pressure they could not give me a sedative and I waited and waited for the pain of the surgeon’s knife. Finally I asked, “Have you made the cut yet???” “Are you crazy!” the voice came back, “I am deadly afraid of blood!” What they did was push a pregnant needle in my leg vein (groin) and used wires to push it up to just below the heart and they released the filters which have spring loaded wires that hook the vein and stay put. The structures unfold into what looked like French Fry baskets of crisscrossed wires. I could see them on the real time x-ray machine; really neat. They filter all the returning blood. They said any new clot would get trapped and the body would dissolve it via digestive type enzymes. I am now a new improved incremental model version 2.0.


Tomorrow I get a CT scan to check on my dear friend the ever sinister colon tumor that threw me such a severe knockout punch. I will get the results on Friday. I will send out a follow up report.

Kim has been my greatest friend through this and her attention is beyond imagination. I can’t say enough about her.

What did I learn? Nothing philosophical, but it was one hell of a lesson in humility. Me a mighty warrior can be brought from full life to a full death in about one second; that is fragile! It was no Hollywood death where you linger about kissing all your girlfriends goodbye, it was lights out period.

I was placed on Coumadin (warfarin) and Kim was giving me two shots a day in the stomach. Yesterday they tested my Coumadin levels and told me to stop the shots. What a relief for both Kim and me.

Remember, Enjoy yourself for you only live twice!

Paul The Miracle Child.

 

Paul's email address is proussin AT verizon DOT net and I'm sure would love to hear from everyone how much he is loved. Please drop him a line, he's a great guy who's life light is about to go out.

Sincerely,
Dean.

Very sad to hear this.

Wow.. There are no adequate words that I can find to describe how I feel about this. I've dropped an email.

Yikes, that is one heck of a tale.

I sure hope Paul gets well soon. At least he has a good attitude about his situation (I certainly wouldn't have that courage).

Sent Paul a message. Wish him and his family and friends all the best.

 

 

 

Ron

Miracles have been known to happen.  Let this be the time one does!

 

Stan