When a couple gets married, they vow to love and cherish each other in both sickness and health from the moment they say ‘I do.’
Unfortunately, a couple from Wisconsin ended up having to put that vow to the test much sooner than they ever expected they would need to. During their dream honeymoon just days after getting married, the 30-year-old groom caught a cold, which has left him fighting for his life.
The Dream Wedding
On July 21, 2018, Adam and Bridget Spoerri got married surrounded by all of their friends and family members. The ceremony was hosted at the South Shore Pavilion at a park on the edge of Lake Michigan in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where the couple both live and work.
Starting Their Life Together
For the couple, their wedding day was everything they had dreamed of. They managed to celebrate the love they shared for each other and made vows to love and cherish each other for the rest of their lives. A few days later, the couple set off on their honeymoon.
The Honeymoon
“Adam is probably the nicest person I have ever met. He makes me a better person,” Bridget, an English teacher, told Fox 6. For their honeymoon, Adam and Bridget had planned to go on a road trip together to Lake Superior. However, while at a bed and breakfast in Minnesota, Bridget ended up catching a cold.
Coming Down With A Cold
Not long after, Adam caught the same cold and started experiencing flu-like symptoms. Bridget’s cold started to go away on its own. But 30-year-old Adam wasn’t so lucky. His symptoms were more extreme and continued to get worse as the days passed.
A Worried Wife
Thinking Adam had a bad case of the flu, Bridget asked him if they should go to the hospital. “Adam first had symptoms of kind of a general chest infection, cold, cough,” Bridget said. Adam, a home renovator, didn’t want to spend their honeymoon at the hospital so told his concerned wife that he’d be fine.
The Symptoms Get Worse
He figured he just needed to rest and that he’d start getting better. Unfortunately, that’s not what happened as the days passed. On August 5, just two weeks after their dream wedding, Bridget insisted on taking her new husband to the hospital.
Time To Go To The Hospital
He was incredibly weak and showed no signs of improvement. That day, Bridget took Adam to the emergency room at Aurora St. Luke’s Medical Center. While at the hospital, Adam was so weak he could barely hold his head up as his neck wobbled.
A Mystery Illness
He could barely even swallow the pills doctors were trying to give him even when they crushed them up. In order to break, Adam had to brace himself with his arms. Doctors weren’t sure what was causing the strange symptoms, but it was clear he was going to need more intense care.
The Paralysis Begins
As a result, he was admitted to the intensive care unit at the hospital. Within a couple of days at the hospital, Adam lost control of his muscles in his left arm, right shoulder, right arm, and neck. Then the muscles in the 30-year-old’s face started drooping.
Puzzling Symptoms
He could no longer swallow at all and he was seriously struggling to breathe on his own. “His head became very weak. He could not swallow and then his breathing was very labored,” Bridget said. The symptoms puzzled the doctors, who became frustrated since they couldn’t figure out what was causing Adam’s illness.
Searching For Answers
Because he was gradually becoming paralyzed, doctors wondered if he had polio. Yet tests for the virus came back negative. Meanwhile, doctors intubated Adam and put him on a ventilator to keep him alive while they continued running tests.
A Terrifying Experience
“It was awful. He was scraping the cardboard because he couldn’t breathe,” Bridget told the Journal Sentinel about those horrifying moments Adam was fighting to stay alive. “I thought he was dying every day those first two weeks. I had no hope.”
Stuck In The ICU
Adam and Bridget should have been living in newly married bliss in their new home, which Adam had planned on completely renovating himself before he got sick. Instead, Adam was stuck in the intensive care unit. Bridget refused to leave his side the entire time.
Four Weeks Later
She spent her nights trying to sleep in a reclining chair next to Adam’s hospital bed. Then in September, after about four weeks in the hospital and almost 100 different tests, doctors finally figured out what was wrong with Adam. Unfortunately, the prognosis wasn’t good.
The Diagnosis
According to Adam’s team of doctors, he was suffering from Acute Flaccid Myelitis (AFM), a serious disease that affects the spinal cord and the pathway that carries messages to and from the brain. The disease is incredibly rare and is more often seen in children than adults.
Not A Subtle Disease
“AFM is not subtle,” Rodney Willoughby, program director for antibiotic stewardship at Children’s Hospital and the Medical College of Wisconsin, told the Journal Sentinel. According to Willoughby, the symptoms include “sudden weakness in an arm, or a leg, or the face – it doesn’t hurt, but is paralyzed – trouble with saliva, or swallowing, sometimes trouble breathing normally or deeply.” He also explained that AFM usually presents itself as a cold at first.
The Prognosis
Unfortunately, there is no cure for AFM and Adam’s case is particularly complicated because he has asthma and Crohn’s disease. Some patients with AFM have been able to regain movement with physical therapy and some have even fully recovered, so Bridget and their family have remained hopeful in the more than three months since Adam fell ill.
Signs Of Improvement
During that time, Adam has had terrifying experiences where he believed he was going to die from not being able to breathe. However, he has shown promising signs of improvement. At one point, he was almost entirely paralyzed. Now, he is starting to walk again and is regaining strength in his torso, back, shoulders, and arms. His doctors are even starting to slowly wean him off the ventilator hoping he will eventually be able to breathe entirely on his own.
An Unbreakable Bond
Adam still has a long road ahead of him, but amazingly, the experience has brought him and Bridget closer than they ever imagined. “I don’t know how he is so calm through all of this, but sometimes he’s had to calm me down,” said Bridget. “Adam and his wife have shown such strength through this entire illness,” Dr. Taylor Finseth, Adam’s neurologist at Aurora St Luke’s told the Journal Sentinel. “They really amaze me. The love that his wife shows for him is incredible.”
Determined To Recover
In the wake of Adam’s illness, the couples’ friends and family have supported them by starting a GoFundMe account and even offered to begin renovating their home. According to Bridget, Adam is still determined to renovate the home, which they only got to spend one day in together. “I’ll do one tile a day if I have to,” he said.
