Hilton Head chef Golson fights staph in the ICU amidst a parade of family, delirium

They call it “ICU delirium.”

It’s not limited to patients in intensive care — like popular Hilton Head Island chef Charlie Golson of Bluffton, who is fighting a mysterious staph infection that damaged his spine.

I visited his wife, Nancy, on Tuesday at the Neurosciences Intensive Care Unit at the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston.

She said that, in Charlie’s room, the delirium comes with losing track of day and night in a scene that never changes, for someone who desperately wants to leave.

In the waiting room, the odd shapes of fog inside a double-pane window start to look like charging buffalo.

“I’ve watched two different workers from mortuaries take people out in brown boxes,” she said.

She’s been there three weeks.

“They said from the beginning it’s going to be a roller coaster ride,” she said.

It’s true.

The previous day, Charlie was singing, “Oh, Lord, won’t you buy me a Mercedes Benz,” and he lifted his arms high for a physical therapist and moved his legs. He told Nancy, “They took me down for a CAT scan at 2 o’clock in the morning.”

That was because his hemoglobin dropped and he needed two units of blood, and it caused Nancy to rush back from one of her two visits to Bluffton. She drove up U.S. 17 through a driving rain, only to get there and hear about Charlie channeling Janis Joplin.

The next morning, Nancy said, “Today, he’s back in Delusionville. He’s counting. He counts by ones, then fives, then 10s and starts over. I doubt he could talk to that bottle right there. Maybe by this afternoon, he may be better.”

He was.

His daughter-in-law, Marti Smith Golson, who visited on Tuesday with her 8-year-old son, William, reported to a relieved Facebook following that Charlie was allowed to sip coffee and water that afternoon, plus eat ice. He was able to breathe off the ventilator for a little while. The nurses took Charlie outside for the first time in a month.

“He was overwhelmed, so we only stayed outside a few minutes,” Marti said. “Most important, he’s still got his ability to make everyone smile.”

Doctors don’t know what caused the infection. Maybe it came after he pulled some pine sap off his foot, but that’s only a guess — all they could come up with after a fine-toothed inquiry. It could take six to eight weeks to get rid of the infection, and damaged nerves that regenerate do it at a mere1 mm per day. They’re told it will take six months to a year for Charlie to rehabilitate, and then there’s a 50/50 chance he’ll be able to walk. They put in a tracheostomy tube and a feeding tube that he’s pulled out twice. He now wears big mittens, like boxing gloves.

The goal is to get him to the Shepherd Center in Atlanta soon for rehabilitation. An open wound needs to heal first.

“I’m always an optimist,” Nancy said. “I do believe God works things out for the best, whether you believe it at the time or not.”

The people

Everyone else has come and gone from the ICU waiting room.

Marilyn was there for two weeks. Nancy said no one came to wait with her for the first week. Her husband was brain dead, but she would not let them take him off the ventilator. They had mentioned a shot that could ease any of his distress if need be. She took that to mean they wanted to kill him. Her nephew tried to explain it, but she thought she saw a tear in her husband’s eye and saw it as a sign she should not agree to take him off life-support.

Jane was an ICU patient for only five days. She and her husband were visiting her mother in Pawleys Island to comfort her after the passing of her husband. On the way to the beach, Jane had a seizure. She ended up at MUSC. She had a brain tumor. It was removed. It was benign, and she went home.

“She walked around in the prettiest pajamas I’ve ever seen,” Nancy said.

Pam and Victor had been sweethearts since they were 15. He was diagnosed with glioblastoma and the doctors told Pam he wasn’t going to make it. But she still kept talking about his recovery. “If he gets better, we’ve got tickets to the ballgame,” she’d say. “We’ll go to the ballgame.”

Sylvia’s husband had a case very similar to Charlie’s, but it was not as advanced. Their lives were busy and they didn’t react to the earliest signs that something was wrong — like dropping a Coca-Cola for no apparent reason. They had a son’s wedding to deal with, and her husband insisted he was fine. He left ICU for a rehabilitation center.

Nancy said she’s seen them keep someone on life-support long enough for family to come and hold a hand one last time. It seems to help everyone, she said. She’s counted 13 people gathering around a bed at one time.

One day she wrote this on Facebook:

“We all think we have the hardest life or the worst day or whatever. Today, in the small waiting room of the Neuro ICU, I hugged three newfound friends who each within the space of a few hours had to make the hardest decision of their life: to give permission to end life support for a loved one.

“One had to bid her husband goodbye and go home to their small children. One told her brother goodbye — hit head-on by a drunk driver. Another told her mother goodbye: her mother had not even seen the baby she had a week ago.

“I am so lucky and by the grace of God I was not one of those three today. Charlie continues to make creeping progress and I thank everyone for your prayers and thoughts.”

The businesses

Family members take turns driving up for the day to sit with Nancy and look in on Charlie.

Their grown children, Palmer Golson and Margaret Pearman, are running the restaurant that their dad opened 34 years ago, Charlie’s L’Etoile Verte. The whole staff has stepped up, Nancy said, and they’ve been able to communicate a couple of times with Charlie via Skype.

Patsy Hodge and others are keeping things going at Nancy’s business, Eggs ‘N’ Tricities in Bluffton.

Meanwhile, Nancy stays at a nearby hotel that offers shuttle service to the hospital.

She says the hospital staff and countless people have been so kind to her.

“I opened about 30 cards the other night, and I didn’t even know half of them,” Nancy said. “They had eaten at Charlie’s.”

Ed Dowaschinski of Hilton Head gave them a Miraculous Medal from the Sisters of Mary.

Good friends, like Ann and Monty Lafitte, visit regularly.

And Nancy knows everyone and everything going on in her wing of the ninth floor.

She calls the waves of nursing students who walk through in white suits “gaggles of geese.”

She chats with a man polishing brass banisters. He says he used to do the same for the generals at The Citadel.

She and Marti try to crack the case of the man in a trench coat who walked by with a security officer.

A volunteer strolls through with his therapy dog, Lucky.

None of the lamps work because everyone uses the wall sockets to charge cellphones.

One day last week, Margaret brought her baby, Fern, to the ICU. Charlie has been in the hospital almost as long as Fern has been alive.

She held the baby at the doorway, and Charlie wrote her a note in French.

“To my dear Fern,” he said.

“You are adorable. I thank your mother for this wonderful visit. It has been years since I first saw (your mother) Elinor Margaret. The next time we meet will be in a church, at St. Paul’s (for your baptism).

“Until we meet again — for certain,

“Charlie”

Nancy says, “I hope that holds true.”

This story was originally published July 19, 2017 at 12:39 PM with the headline "Hilton Head chef Golson fights staph in the ICU amidst a parade of family, delirium."