Staying #RickStrong

Severson benefit set for tonight to help with medical expenses

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VOLGA – Rick and Stephanie Severson’s lives were busy with work, outdoor recreation and their blended family, according to Rick, but that changed nearly overnight last fall when he went in for quadruple bypass surgery and suffered a stroke afterward.

To help with medical costs, Century 21 is hosting the #RickStrong Benefit at 5 p.m. today at the Volga Fire Hall.

Dinner will be provided for a free-will donation.

“A whole group of contractors ... is donating the food and doing the meal,” Stephanie said. “Rick Stevens is doing all of the meat.”

A silent auction is set from 5 to 7:30 p.m. Items available include a hog, an ice auger, jewelry, fireworks, donated acres of crop dusting, and “I don’t know how many guns,” Stephanie said.

Raffle items include 100-pound beef bundles from a cow donated by the Seversons’ son, Aubrey and Larissa Scherff and Stephanie’s ex-brother-in-law, Paul and Jill Scherff with Scherff Cattle Co. Tickets are $20 each, and only 500 will be sold.

Other raffle items are two seven-day vacation packages with $500 flight vouchers. Century 21 brokers donated the trips, which are timeshares, so winners will have their choice of destination, Stephanie said. Tickets are $10 each or three for $25.

The Seversons’ young grandkids have sold $715 of raffle tickets. Raffle tickets can be purchased at Century 21, The Depot, Carousel, Gas n’ Mor, The Lucky Dog, CC’s Bar and Bozied’s.

Life before

Married for 15 years, the Seversons have four kids between them and five grandkids. The couple enjoys hunting and fishing, and several trophies from those trips hang on the walls of their Volga home.

“He’s a contractor, and I’m a real estate agent for Century 21,” Stephanie said.

“I’ve been doing the carpenter work since 1977,” said Rick, 58.

Nothing really slowed him down, even an arterial disease in his legs.

“His main arteries were plugged,” Stephanie said, so stents were put in his legs a few years ago.

“They were gradually getting worse,” Rick said.

“It bothered him, but he just kept going,” Stephanie said.

“Too busy to get surgery done. All of a sudden I started feeling it in my chest. Figured it was time to get it checked out,” Rick said.

Facing surgery

They weren’t expecting the news they got.

“They wanted to do a bypass,” Rick said.

“We were thinking he’d just have stents like he did in his legs and life would go on ... so that was a shock in itself,” Stephanie said.

Another shock was Rick needed a quadruple bypass, meaning surgeons would be replacing four arteries in his heart.

On Sept. 30, he had surgery, and they took a vein out of his right leg from about mid calf “all the way up,” Stephanie said.

They used that vein to replace the arteries in his heart, she said.

“They take the heart out and work on it,” Stephanie said.

In spite of the family’s fears, the surgery only took about 4 1/2 hours and was done around noon.

“The bypass went very, very well. In fact, he was out in record time,” Stephanie said.

The problems started about 10:45 p.m. that night, she said.

From bad to worse

A nurse came in to check Rick’s vitals and asked Stephanie to leave the room. She watched numerous people come and go from her husband’s room.

“I’m stalking the door,” she said of her vigil.

When the nurse finally got back to her, he said they couldn’t diagnose what had happened for sure, “but he said, ‘I’ve been around the business long enough to know that your husband’s had a massive stroke,’” Stephanie said. “That nurse called a chaplain immediately ... I was thinking, ‘this isn’t good.’”

She called all the kids and their own pastor to the hospital.

In the morning, a CT scan showed the damage “covered the whole half of his brain. The whole half of his brain was blacked out,” Stephanie said.

It was the right side of Rick’s brain that suffered the stroke, so it affected the left side of his body. As bad as it was, it could have been worse.

“If the stroke had occurred on the left side of his brain ... they would have told us to just let him go,” Stephanie said.

Since Rick was still at the heart hospital, he was transferred to Avera ICU on Oct. 1. That night, the family got the full picture of how bad it was.

“They gave me a 3 percent chance to live,” Rick said.

“The neurosurgeon ... just looked at me and said, ‘You’re his wife, you have a decision to make,’” Stephanie recalled.

The neurosurgeon wanted to remove Rick’s skull flap because his brain was swollen. “He said, ‘If you choose not to remove it, he dies in five days. If you remove it, he has a 50 percent chance he’ll die on the table and a 50 percent chance ... he’ll be in an old folks’ home,’” Stephanie said. “So those were my statistics.”

She called the kids back and “we made a decision as a family ... I just said, he’s coming home.”

Rick was scheduled for surgery at 9:30 a.m. Oct. 2, but at 6:30 a.m., “his eyes were glassed over and they were both black. I just knew it wasn’t good,” Stephanie said.

Rick was immediately prepped for surgery and “it went awesome,” Stephanie said. “However, still very, very scary.”

Rick was on life support for three or four days, transferred to ICU and then transferred to neurology for a total of four to five weeks. The family didn’t realize he was still in mortal danger.

“Even in rehab, they were concerned that he was going to still survive,” Stephanie said.

The flap was put back on around Dec. 1, and he stayed in rehab until Dec. 19.

“Half of his body was done. Everything inside, everything outside was not functioning at all,” Stephanie said.

“They were concerned ... they didn’t think Rick would ever swallow. That he may never totally speak,” Stephanie said.

“The therapy department at Avera – they’re fabulous – they started therapy a day after his flap was removed,” Stephanie said. “They sat him up in a chair on the fourth day.”

Rick worked with a team of therapists for three hours a day: one hour each for physical therapy, occupational therapy and speech therapy.

“It’s not actually for my speech, but it’s for my memory,” Rick said.

Physical therapy is for the lower body, and occupational therapy is for the upper body, Stephanie said.

“We saw it, that three hours of therapy was harder than any work he had ever did his whole life,” Stephanie said.

“It drains ya,” Rick said.

The road back

Rick is still taking all three therapies and he’s been improving greatly, but there’s still many hurdles.

He can walk by himself if there’s someone nearby, because a fall could be very dangerous. He uses a cane to help with balance.

He has problems seeing things on his left side.

“I would maybe have to see you move or hear something (to know something or someone was there),” Rick said.

Most stroke victims have severe problems with speech, but two days after the flap surgery, Rick was talking, albeit in “a little, tiny robot voice,” Stephanie said.

Even that amazed his doctors, although some of the things he said had them questioning Rick’s sanity and leaving his wife to explain his sometimes profane sense of humor.

“They just laughed because they got to know him then,” Stephanie said.

He now sounds completely normal and can hold a regular conversation.

Having a stroke after bypass surgery is “a little bit common,” Rick said.

“I’m pretty lucky it didn’t get my speech any worse than it did,” Rick said. “Avera is an awesome place to be. They are just excellent people there.”

There’s still emotional adjustments.

“It’s been rough; it’s been awful,” Rick said.

“Oh my gosh, even giving up my career has been a little tough. I put a lot of blood, sweat and tears into it doing the carpentry thing,” he said.

Keep going

Rick’s motto is expressed pretty well in the country song, “If You’re Going Through Hell (Keep on Going)” by Rodney Atkins.

“It’s a good song; it’s got a good story to it,” Rick said.

“I went through hell, but I got to bring my angel with me – meaning Stephanie,” he said.

There’s been other help along the way.

“With the whole blended family thing ... from day one, I’m like, we’re all in this together,” Stephanie said. “Everybody just worked together ... they just pitched in.”

Colleagues have helped, too.

“I had some contractors pitch in and finish one of my projects I was working on,” Rick said. “They did me a nice favor.”

“The associates at C21 have just been awesome. They’ve kept me going,” Stephanie said, even mentioning her competitors’ support.

They’ve heard about acquaintances going through their own personal losses and yet still ask how Rick’s doing.

“Oh, my God, that brought a tear,” Rick said.

There have been laughs, too, as people relay funny or touching stories.

“The community is amazing,” Rick said.

He expects to keep making progress.

“They said you can improve up to seven years,” Rick said. “I’ve really gotten a lot stronger in the last couple weeks. Honest, it’s weird; I just feel it, you know.”

Contact Jodelle Greiner at jgreiner@brookingsregister.com.