Survived and Thriving: Tucson resident rediscovers the joy of living

Tucson resident Deena Hadley spent the last year learning how to live again.

Following a harrowing medical journey that left her paralyzed from the chest down, the 68-year-old said she learned to never give up hope.  

“I just love life — I loved life before this and I now love life again and its simple pleasures,” she said. “I want to get my story out there and help even one person to continue with their life. 

“My life’s not perfect, but at least I’m still here to live it.”

Hadley’s journey began last December, when she received a medical port on her left arm to be used for administering her arthritis medication. A few days following the procedure, she woke up to find her arm very swollen from the elbow to the wrist. Hadley was advised by her doctor to visit the hospital, where she was directly admitted to the ICU and diagnosed with sepsis. 

“I couldn’t move at all, and the sepsis was taking over my body, one organ at a time,” she said. “It was like my body was frozen.”

Hadley said that her doctors recommended various treatments and strategies, telling her husband — Arnold Chin — that she needed kidney dialysis and then said she needed a liver biopsy. After a week of examination and postulation, she said the doctors discovered that her medical port was the cause of her sepsis — and that they didn’t want to remove it. Hadley explained that medical ports are typically placed in the chest and the doctors at Oro Valley Hospital had never seen one in a patient’s arm.  

Previous medical ports placed in her chest flipped over and became unusable, the survivor said. Following the news from her doctors and left seemingly with no options, Hadley resigned herself to sobbing in the intensive care unit. Hope soon arrived in the form of a doctor who, passing by, noticed Hadley in her shattered state. 

“I was crying in intensive care, and a doctor walked by and he said, ‘Young lady, can I help you,’” she said. “I said, ‘Only if you’re a surgeon’ and he said, ‘I am a surgeon. What can I help you with?’ I told him what happened and that nobody would take it out.

“He said, ‘Well, they didn’t ask me.’” 

After examining the infected area, she said the doctor scheduled her for a surgery to extract the port. On Dec. 20 — three days after the operation — she was transferred to Northwest Transitions Inpatient Rehabilitation, where she recovered for a week. On her discharge day, Hadley used her walker to get to the nurses’ station at the facility, joyously declaring that her husband would be there soon to get her. 

“Everybody loved my husband because he was there with me constantly and he has been my rock through all of this,” she said. 

In an unfortunate turn of events, Hadley suddenly collapsed on top of her walker and was rushed by ambulance to Northwest Medical Center. After hours of tests, she said three doctors came into her room, looking for Chin. Hadley explained to the doctors that he went home for the evening, as visiting hours concluded and no one instructed him to remain at the facility. 

“I called him, and I said, ‘You’ve got to come back — the doctors won’t tell me what’s going on,” she said. “I said, ‘They gave me a shot, and I can’t move again. I’m scared.’”

When her husband returned, Hadley said the doctors told him that they sent her test results to four out-of-state hospitals because “no one in Tucson wants to touch the case.” The physicians delivered the news that Hadley sustained a complete fracture in her spine that was squeezing her heart valve and that she would need to be transported by helicopter to a different facility. The doctors instructed her husband to give her “the best hug and kiss you’ll ever give her,” as they believed it was likely she would not survive the flight.

Hadley arrived alive at Mayo Clinic Hospital in Scottsdale at 3 a.m., where doctors ran tests and prepped her for surgery. The medical team discovered that the sepsis settled in her back and eroded her spine, nerves and muscles. They cleaned out the infection, reinforced her spine with a metal rod and closed the incisions. The surgery did not go without consequence, however, as Hadley’s vitals dropped during the procedure and the doctors responded by resuscitating her with defibrillators. 

The next morning when Hadley tried to get out of bed, she found that she could not move. She still had control of her head and arms, but the rest of her body remained motionless and unfeeling. The doctor told the couple that her paralysis would be permanent and that she might require more operations to address issues they were not able to at the time. He told Chin that Hadley would likely not improve and that the two needed to be prepared for the worst-case scenario. 

On Jan. 2, she was transported by ambulance to Encompass Health Rehabilitation Hospital of Northwest Tucson. She said she didn’t know it at the time, but Encompass would eventually have a monumental impact on her life.

At this point, however, Hadley said she gave up. A month had passed while she engaged in various therapy sessions, made no progress and continued to experience excruciating pain. She said the situation got worse when she was sitting in her wheelchair one day and her legs began to tingle, then burn and a terrible pain shot up her back. Hadley’s doctors decided that she needed more tests and sent her to St. Joseph’s Hospital, where she underwent another surgery to reinforce her spine with a metal rod. She said the procedure would cause her to end up at square one in her recovery again. 

Hadley spent 17 more days in the hospital, severely ill between sepsis, an MRSA infection, an abscess in her back caused by the original infection and a fractured T11 disc. She exhausted much of her Medicare coverage and had no choice but to return to Encompass on March 17. The survivor returned home on May 1 for the first time since she was hospitalized in December.      

She continued therapy and gained access to a large electrical wheelchair with enhanced functionality to allow her to get back to every-day tasks. Hadley said that getting to be at home and getting her wheelchair helped her to begin to accept a new concept of normality. 

She returned to Encompass for more occupational therapy and learned how to get in and out of a car — which she accesses with a smaller electric wheelchair and got a large van that she can navigate with her regular wheelchair. Hadley can stand on her own long enough for simple tasks, such as brushing her teeth and putting her pants on. She can also walk short distances and managed to complete a session where she covered 330 feet.

“I owe everything I have now to my wonderful husband, my good friends and the wonderful therapist at Encompass,” the survivor said.

Soon after, she was able to get back to all the activities and people that she loved in life. 

During her endeavor, Hadley said she made the decision to keep going for herself, her husband and her granddaughter. Her son died in 2016, and she and her husband supported their granddaughter through college. 

“I just had too much to live for to give up,” she said. “She and my husband were my main motivation, and we have a wonderful life.”

Though her outlook on life remains full of hope, Hadley said that the experience was dreadful. She said that the best advice she can give someone who struggled through a similar situation is to be patient with themselves but never stop trying. 

“Give yourself time to grieve because you know you’re losing something — you’re losing your old life,” she said. “Once you’ve given yourself the time and you start feeling like that’s all there is, that’s the time to seek help and reach out to somebody so you can find the meaning again and the will to live.

“Without it, you’ll just exist. You won’t be living at all.” 

Despite having walked a path fraught with near-death experiences, grief, loss and various setbacks and challenges, Hadley has not lost her zest for life and found a way to thrive again. She said that while she still faces challenges, her condition doesn’t keep her from what’s important — going to church every Sunday, playing cards with her friends and enjoying cruises with her husband and loved ones. Hadley said she hopes that others who have dealt with traumatic experiences and drastic life changes can do the same.

“I’m very fortunate,” she said. “It just took learning a few more things to make me decide I can do this. My life’s not perfect, but my life is perfect when it comes to the way I’m able to live it and do things and spend time with the people I love and care for.

“It’s not an easy life, but it’s my life. It’s the life I’m going to live and I’m still making progress.”