After surgical complications nearly took his life, Florida man regains his independence
By the time Trent Huckbody opened his eyes, the calendar had leapt forward two months. The world came back in fragments— the hiss of oxygen, the tube down his throat, his son’s hand on his arm, telling him everything is okay.
Before all of this, Trent, 54, split his days between family and work. He owns Hayloft Western Wear in Fort Myers, Florida. He and his former wife, Jen – still a close friend – share 16 kids: a blend of biological, adopted, step and what they call “bonus” kids. Trent is also helping to raise their 7-year-old granddaughter, the light of his life.
“We are a very untraditional blended family but the one thing we have in common is our love for each other,” Jen said.
Trent had never needed a hospital until he faced surgery to remove a kidney with a cancerous cyst. It should have been just a few days at Lee Memorial Hospital in Fort Myers. What followed was a cascade: aspiration pneumonia, sepsis, respiratory failure, blood clots in both lungs and metabolic encephalopathy, a condition where the brain stops working normally because of severe illness.
Trent required transfer to a higher level of care at Tampa General Hospital. Twice, physicians there placed Trent on extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) – a last-ditch, life-support therapy that oxygenates blood outside the body when lungs cannot. Many patients don’t survive ECMO once. Fewer still survive it twice.
At one point, Trent’s heart stopped.
Through it all, Trent’s friends and family tried to hold fast.
“We thought for sure he wasn’t going to be with us,” Jen said. “At one point, the doctor asked Kenny (their oldest son), ‘Do you want to continue treatment?’ It felt very hopeless.”
Yes, Kenny said, they were continuing treatment.
Trent beat the odds. Nearly six weeks after his initial surgery, he finally stabilized.
Recovery begins
Trent transitioned to Select Specialty Hospital – Fort Myers. He was still ventilator dependent, now with a tracheostomy, an opening in the neck to help with breathing. He had a feeding tube for nutrition. Even Trent’s smallest movements required three to four people because of muscle atrophy.
The family chose Select Specialty Hospital after learning “people come in on vents and they get off vents,” Kenny said.
A physician led, multidisciplinary team of nurses, therapists, dietitians, a case manager, pharmacists and more put together a plan tailored to Trent’s complex needs. Other vital specialists including gastroenterologists, cardiologists, nephrologists also contributed to his care.
Breathing came first. Respiratory therapists began spontaneous breathing trials – short, focused periods when the ventilator provided minimal support to see how Trent’s lungs managed on their own. Early on, Trent dealt with mucus in his airway that had to be suctioned. While he remembers very little about this time in his recovery, he remembers the anxiety when he began to awaken and realized he was connected to a machine to breathe. Kenny was by his side.
As Trent improved, a speech-language pathologist attached a special valve to his trach that pushed air through his vocal cords, enabling Trent to speak for the first time in nine weeks.
His voice sounded different, he said, “but it was a relief knowing I could talk.”
It was a big moment for his family, too. “Before the valve, we read his lips,” Kenny said. Once the valve was in place, “I put him on the phone so we could hear him speak. It was like, ‘Hey, how’s it going?’ It was a little hard to understand him, but it was still amazing.”
A few days later, Trent was liberated from the ventilator, a moment that gave him hope recovery was possible. Three days later, his trach was removed.
Trent passed a fiberoptic test demonstrating he could safely swallow. He was cleared to begin eating food by mouth again, starting with thickened liquids and soft foods. Trent had arrived at Select Specialty Hospital with a large pressure wound from lying in bed for so long and while wound care nurses cleaned and bandaged it, Trent also was given a high-protein diet to promote healing.
His family made sure he also enjoyed a few of his favorites, including meatloaf and pizza.
Relearning to walk
Physical therapy began gently and intentionally. In bed, Trent began leg exercises to restore flexibility, strength and circulation. He tightened his thigh muscles to rebuild quadriceps strength for standing. He rotated ankles and lifted his legs to wake dormant muscles. Occupational therapists arrived with grooming and dressing tasks, rebuilding fine motor control and independence. They also worked on cognitive retraining, such as following commands, sustaining attention and orienting to place and time, which was challenging after weeks of critical illness.
Nearly three weeks after admission, therapists used a mechanical standing device to help Trent rise. The first time, he stood 10 seconds. Within a week, he could stand for two and a half minutes.
“The first time I stood again, they used the machine and it was hard,” Trent recalled. “But we did it every day and next thing you know, I’m pulling myself up.”
Then came the walker.
While much of Trent’s recovery is still a blur, learning to walk is not.
“When I first started out on the walker, I would move the walker in front of me, then take two steps. Move the walker, then take two steps,” Trent said. “Now I can walk normal with the walker.”
Making it home
Eight weeks after his first admission to Select Specialty Hospital, Trent could breathe, talk, eat and think clearly. He could walk 150 feet with the walker. His wound was healing; the stitches were gone. So also was the feeding tube. Trent could shower, dress and groom himself.
Trent discharged to an inpatient rehabilitation hospital for a week of intensive therapy and was home a week later.
For Jen, the transformation landed in a single snapshot. “It’s amazing,” she said. “Two nights ago, he was sitting on the edge of the bed in a baseball hat and normal clothes, making jokes and giving us all a hard time. He looks so good.”
Trent is still absorbing the details of his illness. “I lost two full months,” he explained. And when he did awaken, it was hard to get his head around it all.
“I have slowly been told what happened,” Trent said. “I didn’t know the severity of it and am very grateful I came out of it. It’s really a miracle that I’m here.”
Trent thanked the care team that helped him get his life back. “This is the first time I have needed medical attention like this in my life and I am so thankful for the treatment and the positive healing culture at Select Specialty Hospital. I definitely came to the right hospital for my recovery.”
He’s also deeply grateful to family and friends who kept his business going, took care of his finances, visited, called and encouraged him. Kenny was there daily, sometimes twice a day.
“I could have lost everything,” Trent said. “And Jen, God bless her. She kept family and friends informed of everything. When I heard about all the prayer groups they had praying for me, that made me a little emotional.”
Trent continues to recover with home health. His focus now is on a milestone that once seemed impossible: traveling to Nevada for his daughter’s wedding.