Athens man puzzles meaning of life after near-death experience

The News Courier

By Kelly Kazek

On cold, winter days when Allan Teusink can’t umpire a baseball game or work at the golf course, he spends his time fitting together hundreds of tiny puzzle pieces, creating a larger work of art.

He also contemplates the bigger puzzle — the one whose solution will let him know exactly why he is alive and healthy only nine months after being on the brink of death.

“It is a miracle that I’m alive,” Teusink said Wednesday from his Athens home where he lives with his dog, Squeeker.

Every day, he feels the responsibility of having been given a second chance at life.

“There has to be a reason I survived,” he said. “I’m just one person out of billions on this earth. Why was I spared?”

Teusink said he thinks he knows why God spared him, but he does not want to make public his plan — just yet. Whatever he does, it will somehow be for the greater good.

A sudden pain

Teusink’s near-death and rebirth began at about 7 a.m. on Feb. 19, when he was standing in his bedroom dressing for the day ahead.

“All of a sudden, I felt like I got hit in the back by a two-by-four,” he said. “I fell on the floor.”

Not knowing what was wrong, the formerly healthy and active 65-year-old Steelcase retiree and divorced father of three grown sons lay unmoving for an unknown time as Squeeker licked his face in concern.

“I thought it was all over,” Teusink said.

Realizing he needed to call for help, he made it to his bed, where he lay for a while, then was able to walk to the kitchen to get the phone and dial 911.

He also called a friend, Joan Sims, in Huntsville.

An ambulance arrived within minutes and took Teusink to Athens-Limestone Hospital’s emergency room. There, a doctor and three nurses worked frantically to keep Teusink alive so they could get him to a specialist. The problem, as Teusink would later learn, was a rare heart disorder.

“He was about as close (to death) as you could be,” said Amy Erwin, a registered nurse and paramedic who was working at the ER that day. She and two other nurses, Casey Robinson and Sabrina Jones, were unsure he would survive.

Sims was told Teusink was unlikely to survive and that she should call his sons, Brad in Michigan, Brian in South Carolina and Bret in Iowa.

“They didn’t think he would make it,” Sims said.

Teusink was later told the determined ER nurses saved him.

“The nurses wouldn’t give up,” he said. “They just kept working.”

It was the first of a string of occurrences that, when perfectly aligned, saved Teusink’s life that day.

Because the local doctor knew Teusink’s problem was too rare to be repaired here, he called Huntsville Hospital. Officials there said they could not operate on Teusink that day because of a blood shortage.

“It turned out to be a good thing,” Teusink said.

The nearest hospital that could take Teusink was the University of Alabama at Birmingham Hospital, where he was taken by MedFlight helicopter. His friend Sims was allowed to accompany him.

In the helicopter, Teusink vomited into a flight helmet and then told the medical technician he needed to use the bathroom.

Thinking back, Teusink said he realized people often lose control of bodily functions as they die.

“The nurse said, ‘There’s nowhere to go here. You’re going to have to wait,’” Teusink said. “By her putting that thought in my mind, it gave me something to hold on to. Otherwise, I think I would have died in flight.”

Arriving at UAB, Teusink would find another series of small miracles. Oddly, the busy hospital had no surgeries scheduled in the appropriate operating room that morning.

“The pre-op and operating room were all mine,” he said.

Then, he would discover, the doctor on call happened to be one of the world’s most renowned cardiovascular surgeons who had written extensively about the rare disorder afflicting Teusink, aortic valve dissection.

Erwin, who also works in Florence as well as Athens, said she has sent many patients to Dr. Albert Pacifico at UAB.

“He’s known as being one of the best in the nation,” she said, adding she was happy to find out he was available to help Teusink, whose condition was precarious. “We knew he was a very unstable person. Whenever you put them on a helicopter, you hope and pray it turns out OK. It was a medical miracle, the way everything kind of fell into place.”

Pacifico was one of the few people who might be able to save Teusink — and he was scheduled to have retired a few weeks before, in January.

“But he put it off for six months,” he said. “He wouldn’t have been there.”

By the time Teusink’s chest was opened, blood had filled the aortic sac. Pacifico performed a bypass to keep the blood flowing to Teusink’s heart while he removed the damaged valve and installed an artificial one.

“The next day, when I spoke to him, he told me there was less than a five percent chance of a person with this disorder making it to the hospital, let alone what happened in my case,” Teusink said. “The nurses up there called it a miracle.”

Life after near-death

Teusink remembers the presence of a UAB nurse named Courtney when he was in recovery.

“I could feel her,” he said. “She was so close to me, asking questions, trying to get me to respond.”

Having to respond would keep him from slipping away, he said.

“I felt I was in a huge black hole,” he said. “I couldn’t see I couldn’t talk. Finally, I shook my head and that’s all she needed. She knew I was coming back.”

Even then, Pacifico told Teusink’s sons, who had arrived at UAB the next morning, that it would be 24 to 48 hours before their father was no longer in danger of dying.

His sons and seven grandchildren were finally told he would live, and Teusink returned to Athens only four days after the surgery.

He wanted to resume his typical activities as an umpire for local high school, youth and adult baseball teams, and also maintaining the grounds at Canebrake Club.

“It was the week before baseball season,” he said. “But the doctor told me it would take about six months to heal.”

During the last week of April, Teusink umpired his first high school game of the season, working as a base umpire rather than behind the plate to protect his chest. He went on to ump at more than 40 youth and American Legion games during the summer.

He returned to his part-time job at Canebrake and walks three miles each day on the walking track at Athens High School.

He has also volunteered his time to help raise funds to renovate and expand the emergency room at Athens-Limestone Hospital.

“I feel as though it’s important,” he said. “If they hadn’t been there, I wouldn’t be here. The emergency room in Athens has struggled for years with negative comments —people having to wait too long. I think they’ve made tremendous strides but there’s a lot that needs to be done, a bigger waiting room, better equipment, more staff. It’s the first line of defense. Without those people, a lot of people wouldn’t make it. ”

The Hospital Foundation is requesting donations from the public to raise funds for the ER. Athens-Limestone Hospital is a non-profit, community facility that does not turn away patients, including those unable to pay.

To make a donation or pledge, call the Hospital Foundation at 233-9236.

Helping raise funds is one way Teusink hopes to repay his community, and God.

“There is that thought in my mind all the time, that I really need to pay God back for sparing me,” he said.