There are, they say, three things a woman never reveals: her weight, her age and, nowadays, her income.  Front Porch Restaurant founder Aline Dodd Guzman is no exception, so let's just say that in terms of age, Aline's 2008 birthday, on July 19, finds her closer to the century mark than she was at this same time last year.  Her weight and income are less impressive, so again, let's just say that age-wise, this is one milestone many of us never expected to see.

Readers of the Newport Plain Talk over the past two years may recall a pair of articles related to Aline that highlighted just how miraculous this year's birthday is.

It was exactly on this day, two years ago, that she embarked on a personal odyssey that would take her, like a ray of light crossing the event horizon of a black hole, rather gently past the brink of death and, to the amazement of family members, friends and most of her medical team, back to the routines of daily life!

For us, having Aline "back to normal," with all her industry, after five full months in hospital and nursing homes, where she dealt with losses of a kidney, gall bladder, half of her left foot and approximately 15 percent of her linguistic ability, is nothing short of a resurrection-our own private miracle.  As of July 19, 2008, Aline is doing fine-and so we thought that knowledge her story may serve to inspire others who may find themselves in hopeless situations.

Stricken

It was on the night of her birthday, 2006, during a visit to Louis' relatives in Mexico that Aline developed a severe migraine. She'd just enjoyed the exhilarating experience of a Mexican fiesta in her honor; but fate would now be taking its course.  For the next 18 months, Aline and her family would be on a frightening path, punctuated by psychic and paranormal events.  No one knew where it would lead. 

Barely making it onto her flight back to Charlotte, N.C., she was semi-conscious during the drive to her home on English Mountain.  En route, Louis' nephew, Dr. Marcoantonio Guzman de las Casas, the physician in whose home her fiesta had been held, phoned from the Mexican capital to alert us to the problem and recommend an immediate CAT scan.  It was very serious.

Aline was flown, the following morning, by Lifestar helicopter to the University of Tennessee Medical Center. She would not be eating, drinking, leaving her hospital bed or even breathing on her own again for a very long time. Being strapped onto the gurney for the flight into Knoxville, Aline remarked to shocked family members: "If this is it, I'm ready to go." And she was.

Reaching the hospital, a cascading array of life-threatening episodes arose: the headache had been caused by bleeding on the brain. Treating it requiring entubation and a medically induced coma for the next two weeks.  Vinyl tubes inserted into nose and esophagus for so long led to pulmonary trauma (ARDS), a shut down of the lungs which most patients her age don't survive. This required a tracheotomy and led to failure of her remaining kidney, which required dialysis.  (Aline had had a kidney and gall bladder removed in 2004.) 

In the meantime, poor circulation had destroyed the tissue around her left toes, which, if she survived, would have to be amputated. They were the least of our concerns, though, because pneumonia had also set in, after that shingles, and it was doubtful that she would ever be able to come off the respirator. For two weeks, Aline lay unconscious, in a tangled web of tubes and cables, with little chance of survival, facing the possibility of life on a respirator and dialysis at the same time if she lived.  The closest facility that could take her case was in northern Kentucky-and no insurance policy would cover it. 

Response

The family's counterattack began.  Moving into rented quarters in a Knoxville motel and later at a UT facility, for the next four months there would be a family member within two feet or two minutes of Aline's hospital bed, 24/7.  Husband Louis slept in a lounge chair in Aline's room at night.  Daughter Maria assumed management of the Front Porch in her absence.  Daughter Linda took an entire year off work from her job as middle school counselor in Michigan to help Aline through her crises. In the August heat, we all took turns sleeping in the motel rooms, eating the hospital canteen food, jarring awake whenever the phone rang, often in the middle of the night, making the long drives back and forth to Cosby. 

Arriving in Knoxville by car and plane from Michigan, Montana, North Carolina, Texas and Mexico, as well as Cocke County, a stream of family members and friends, including preschool age grand and great-grandchildren, entered and left Aline's room non-stop in the Critical Care Unit. UT hospital staff humanely turned a blind eye to the blatant violations of their visitation policies. For the first time in a quarter century, all seven of Aline's offspring and seven of her nine grandchildren were present in the same room at the same time.  The UT hospital staff asked if we were Greek.

As we fought tooth and nail to keep mom with us, she was doing much the same. A series of psychic dreams fed her will to live as she lay comatose, yet very much aware, while family members discussed the logistics of "pulling the plug" with hospital staff who were preparing us for that probability.  Aline's near death experience lasted two long weeks during which she was given the last rights of the Catholic Church. 

Recovery

In the end, it may have been Love personified that pulled Aline out of this spiral. Love of her and by her family; love of and by the business she had built, against impossible odds, 27 years before; love of and by the communities she had served, in Michigan and Tennessee. And finally, love of and by members of her UT medical team.

In the midst of this darkness, Syrian-born Dr. Mazen Khalil, a person the family would become very close to over the next year, reported excitedly that they had finally been able to determine the root cause of her illness-of the present crisis, and of the asthma, skin lesions, pneumonia, heart and gastric problems that had plagued her for years. "Multiple myeloma," he explained "is a type of cancer of the bone marrow. It may be caused by exposure to industrial chemicals. And there IS a cure for it now! You can think of the new drug as a 'smart bomb.'  It attaches itself to and destroys only the cancerous cells, with no harm to the surrounding tissue at all," the doctor reported. "And there is no discomfort associated with it.  No nausea, no hair loss, nothing!" 

Unbeknownst to us at the time, the anti-cancer drug Velkaid was a powerful bone cancer treatment so new that it hadn't even reached the medical journals. Aline would the FIRST person in Tennessee-and perhaps the first in the country-to be given it. Though now routinely administered, there was great interest in her case on the part of the UT medical staff, which may explain the facility's lenience with visitors.  Dr. Khalil, now a close family friend, did not divulge the drug's experimental nature at that time. He needn't have worried. The alternative was NOT an option. We were staggered by the news, but sobered by the knowledge that it all might be too late: Aline would be receiving the drug while still in coma.

Update

This is all in the past now. She did, in fact, make a full recovery-but not without a pitfall along the way.  In February, 2007, Aline suffered a stroke depriving her of her ability to write-a big loss for others, in many ways-and knocking out roughly 15 percent of her ability to transfer thoughts into words and sentences: Broca's aphasia, they call it.  It has not, however, affected her ability to bounce back. 

As of this writing, Aline has no symptoms of any kind whatsoever; there is zero evidence of the myeloma. She has put on weight, sleeps well, mind sharp as an ice-pick.  She still has a passion for reading and understands complex topics. She walks, talks, greets customers and cooks her delicious and unusual Mexican specialties for the Front Porch. She drives, cleans house and has been stopped from personally mopping or sweeping at the restaurant. She even drove herself and Louis the 65 miles to Tyson-McGee airport to pick this writer up-with only half a left foot!  She's still an excellent oil painter.  Above all, she is thrilled just to be alive: "I thank God for every single day." And so do we.

Aline would like to thank the Newport community and the Front Porch staff for their support during her illness. She would also like to invite members of the public to help us keep the Bluegrass music tradition alive in Tennessee by visiting her any weekend at the restaurant to share in her unique vision of combining award-winning Mexican Food with awarding-winning Bluegrass Music Shows.