Life’s fortunes can turn on a dime. But the battle 72-year-old Jim Indelicato has been dealing with for more than 13 years far exceeds what anyone should face in an entire lifetime.
The Mercy High graduate spent 40 years in the military with 3 1/2 years active duty for the Air Force with the balance in the Missouri Air National Guard in St. Louis. His main job was aircraft maintenance. But in those last several years, Jim’s commander also put him in charge of physical fitness. The choice makes sense as Jim is a 32-time marathoner, doing two a year, every year for 16 years. One was run in St. Louis and the other for the Air National Guard in Lincoln, Nebraska. Each guard unit competed against the other to promote physical fitness. Jim always kept himself in shape.
Then, just 11 months and 2 weeks into retirement disaster struck on Sept. 16, 2010. He suddenly felt very ill while driving to Lowe’s to get supplies to do a house rehab with his son, Jimmy.
“Jim got really dizzy, pulled over on the side of the road and started throwing up,” said Diane, his wife of 52 years. “He started to turn around and come back home but got even worse. So, he stopped and threw the car in park. Our daughter, Jody, who is a nurse came to where he was, called an ambulance and they went to the closest hospital.
“She called me and said, ‘Dad is sick. You need to come to the hospital.’ I didn’t think there was any reason to hurry because the man is rarely sick and so healthy. Jody thought it was a stroke or heart attack. He looked at Jody and said, ‘Why can’t I remember how to swallow?’”
Diane said they couldn’t determine if it was a stroke because Jim’s blood pressure has always been good and he has had no heart or cholesterol issues.
A second surgery revealed the culprit: a small clot in his brain stem that was interfering with his brain’s ability to tell his heart to beat and his lungs to breathe. Diane said Jim was at one hospital for six weeks where he was intubated and extubated four times before undergoing a tracheotomy. He was then sent to another hospital for two weeks.
There, he was told that he would “be lucky to even eat pureed food.”
“So, I went home with a feeding tube and a ventilator,” Jim said. “They told me to never take a nap with the ventilator because your brain doesn’t remember to breathe.”
Next, Diane and Jim to The Rehab Institute of St. Louis (TRISL), an affiliation of BJC HealthCare and Encompass Health, where he received intense therapy for seven hours three times a week.
“The therapist there was a godsend. She kept working with him on swallowing. I kept hoping but didn’t think he would be able to,” Diane confided. “But she helped him do so around February 2011.”
That’s when the Indelicatos told a pulmonologist they wanted Jim’s tracheotomy tube removed.
“He looked at us like we were crazy, but they tested Jim and took it out,” Diane said. “A few months later, he went to a bi-pap machine to help open his lungs. He’s still on that for sleeping.”
The TRISL visits lasted two years. When nothing more could be done there, the couple headed to Paraquad in the city of St. Louis three times a week.
“It’s an amazing facility where he made many friends and received great physical therapy,” Diane said. “They started helping him walk with a walker. But I always had to hold his gait belt (to keep him steady). Then, Logan started a program there – the Stephen A. Orthwein Paraquad Center. For Jim, the center wasn’t about getting chiropractic care, but rather giving him back balance and just making him stronger because the most important thing to Jim was being able to walk again and then someday run.”
Jim exceeded expectations and began going to Logan’s Montgomery Health Center facility in Chesterfield three days a week to continue his road to full recovery.
“We love the Logan people from the front desk to the students and clinicians,” Diane said. “We’ve been going so long that they treat him like a rock star. He does everything they want him to do and more! His old clinicians used to say, ‘Jim, on a scale from 1-10, where are you at regarding tiredness or whatever?’ He would say, ‘An 8.’ I would look at him and say, ‘You know very well that’s a 12!’ He just works so hard toward his dream to walk with his cane. The students who are working with him right now are angels.”
The COVID-19 pandemic forced a two-year hiatus in Jim’s journey but when he was able to return to Logan, he started on a walker with wheels and without Diane holding his gait belt.
“Now, they’re helping him walk with a cane. Sometimes, it’s scary to watch as I’m afraid he’ll fall,” Diane said, “but his balance has really improved. It used to be that he always wanted to run. Now, his dream is he just wants to walk!”
Diane said the atmosphere at Logan is very much about sharing everyone’s best ideas. The clinicians give students ideas and the students give clinicians ideas, she said.
A perfect example, Diane said, is Allie Foddrill, who is currently working with Jim. She noticed that he primarily loses his balance when turning in the hall with his cane. So, she took the time to read up on strokes, then called a physical therapist to ask how to teach someone to turn after a stroke.
“It takes a long time to recover from a stroke,” Diane said. “Doctors or professionals used to think if you weren’t better in six months or at most two years, that would be it. But Jim’s a living example that if you put in the work, you can change that.
From the very outset, Jim was told he’d probably never eat again, but he proved them wrong. His speech therapist who helped get his swallow back, finally said, ‘Jim, you eat anything you want,’ according to Diane.
Even a pandemic could not stop his progress. Throughout it, he exercised at home. Even with left-side ataxia, Jim lifts weights and sometimes pushes himself to do not only two-minute planks but 10-minute ones.
His next goal is to totally regain balance and walk with a cane without any assistance.
“He’s the second oldest of eight kids, was military for so long and was so driven that this personality has saved his life,” Dinae said. “He wouldn’t have made it in the hospital that long if he hadn’t been that strong.
“Jim’s amazing and can do anything. If he doesn’t understand something, he reads, then he does. He can fix cars and build garages and beautiful wrap-around decks.”
Diane said his siblings still call on him when they don’t know how to do things. The only problem now is that he can’t do those things himself.
“It’s all in his brain,” she said. “He can tell them what to do, but his left-sided ataxia prevents him from building.”
In addition to Jody and Jimmy, the Indelicatos have another daughter, Joy. They also have seven grandchildren. Diane added that their children and grandchildren have all been their saving grace.
Logan offers three clinics, including Montgomery Health Center in Chesterfield and Logan Chiropractic Health in St. Peters. Each offers a variety of chiropractic services plus Dexa scans that measure bone density and body composition, sports rehab and skeletal services. Anyone can make Logan appointments for a variety of services at loganhealthcenters.com.
