Today’s column is part of an occasional series of updates on people who’ve experienced — and overcame — extraordinary situations in their life.
“Doc, I’m scared. Am I gonna die?” Glen Peterson asked his doctor.
It was a rare moment of seriousness for a jokester who was born with chronic optimism.
“That’s between you and God,” his doctor replied.
This somber exchange took place at St. Margaret Mercy Healthcare Centers, now known as Franciscan Health Dyer, in late February 2011. A few days earlier, Peterson thought he simply had the flu when his body started aching. The 28-year-old Westville High School graduate still showed up for work that day at his trucking job.
“I’ve always been happy-go-lucky so I thought everything would be fine,” Peterson told me in April of that year.
Nothing was fine that day. His body began shutting down with a severe back ache, constant nausea and a dangerously high fever. He went to a hospital emergency room where a doctor also figured it was a bad case of the flu and prescribed him medication, rest and relaxation.
The intense pain didn’t go away. Two days later, he went to St. Anthony Medical Center, now known as Franciscan Health Crown Point. Doctors there also presumed it was the flu and sent him home again. Two days later, his condition worsened. He walked into an urgent care center in Merrillville and passed out on the bathroom floor.
An ambulance rushed him to the Dyer medical center, where doctors initially diagnosed problems with his pancreas or liver. Within hours, Peterson’s body turned jaundice, his blood pressure plummeted and his condition worsened.
“Doctors told us that Glen had a 50-50 chance of living,” recalled his sister, Emily Peterson.
Her brother’s organs began shutting down. At one point he woke up just long enough to notice relatives visiting his hospital room. He knew things were serious. Peterson had to be induced into a coma and put on life support with a ventilator and dialysis.
On his second day in a coma, doctors finally diagnosed the problem: toxic shock syndrome, a rare illness caused by Staphylococcus aureus (staph) bacteria. Risk factors include recent surgery, open wounds and, for women, the use of superabsorbent tampons. To this day, Peterson does not know what caused his life-threatening case.
The illness relentlessly attacked his body. His hands and feet began turning dark and dying. Doctors determined that both of his feet needed amputation. They asked his family for permission. Peterson was taken off life support after a dozen days. When doctors told him the grim news, he cried. Both feet were amputated March 14 of that year. He’s had to learn how to navigate walking, and navigate life, without his feet and with missing fingers.
“I just got new feet,” Peterson told me this week when I contacted him for this column update.
He still has chronic optimism despite the extraordinary challenges in his life.
“It all seems like decades ago,” Peterson said. “I don’t think I even have full body dreams anymore.”
He turns 40 this year, so one-fourth of his life has now been with a disability.
“Back then, it was ‘Let’s make it to next Monday. Let’s see how far I can come next month.’ I didn’t think 11 years in the future even existed.”
Back then, in early 2011, he cried when he looked at an old photo of himself, standing on his own two (natural) feet. I visited him at a health care center in Hammond, where patients rehabilitate themselves in between a hospital stay and going home.
“This one may make it, but this one won’t,” Peterson told me matter-of-factly as he counted off his fingers one by one. “I’ve never been a negative Nellie, so why should I be now?”
His sister began crying at his bedside.
“Don’t cry,” he told her while checking his cellphone. “I’ll be OK.”
Peterson has been OK.
“Fingers crossed,” he told me this week.
Peterson got married in April 2019. His wife, Stephanie, found a job in the Wisconsin Dells last month so the couple moved there from Northwest Indiana. They’re living in a hotel while searching for a rental home.
“We can’t find a single place to rent. The jobs up here pay amazing but there’s no place to live. It’s crazy,” he said. “I’d love to find something customer service related.”
His dream job before toxic shock syndrome attacked his body was to attend culinary arts school and become a chef at an upscale eatery. That got put on the back burner as life’s realities infected his plans.
“Back then, it seemed like turning 40 was so far away,” he said like any other person turning 40.
In 2012, a year after his hospitalization, I caught up with Peterson, who cradled a Starbucks cup in his two mangled hands while using his cellphone on the dashboard of his vehicle. He wanted to show me a YouTube video of him walking around with state-of-the-art prostheses for both of his missing legs.
His hands looked like those of a burn victim, but he was somehow able to cradle a cup, grab a cellphone and even drive a vehicle. He endured several surgeries to return to “normal.”
“I hibernated like a Hobbit because I didn’t feel like I belonged in society,” he told me at the time. “But it’s not my nature to stay hidden away or stuck in a bed. I want to get back to work.”
Peterson found work selling Kirby vacuum cleaners for eight years, using his upbeat personality to sweep customers off their feet. Then he worked for a HVAC company. He’s now looking for a new job in the Dells, applying at many of the resorts.
“I miss dealing with the public,” he said.
