News - Local - South County

Wednesday, Jul. 30, 2008

Man finds balance in life after Pismo near-death experience

Fred Miller of Modesto recounts what it felt like to be paralyzed in a Boogie boarding accident

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The fog had burned off, the sand at Pismo Beach was beginning to sizzle and Modesto real estate agent Fred Miller finally was hot enough to join his teen daughters in the surf.

It was July 25, 2007, the second day in the family’s annual weeklong pilgrimage to Pismo Beach. It was a trip they had been taking for nearly 20 years.

Miller’s wife, Leanne, stayed on the beach while Miller and his brother-in-law, Phil Morino of Modesto, took their Boogie boards into the ocean.

Two of the Millers’ daughters, Natalie and Jacqueline, then 17 and 19, had been surfing for a few hours.

“The waves looked interesting in that they were larger and thicker than normal,” said Miller, who lived near the ocean for about half of his 61 years. “We had heard it was because of a storm down south.

“I went out about 80 yards. It gets deep very gradually, and I was in water about shoulder deep,” he recalled. “I caught my first wave and had a great ride for about 60 yards. I went back out.

“I realized I was farther out than the surfers and other Boogie boarders, bobbing up and down in my black wetsuit,” Miller said.

“So I had just moved in closer to shore about 20 yards but was still one of the farthest out,” he added. “I see a big wave I’d been waiting for. It looked big and strong and almost caught up with the wave in front of it. I made a point to catch it, and I thought everyone else would, too.

“I caught the wave as it started breaking and it picked me up very nicely, but unfortunately, it just rolled me around,” Miller recalled. “I was coming down fast, but I had no concern. I never dreamed I would ever reach the bottom, nor did I ever dream I would slam into the ocean floor.”

The wave drove him head first into the hard sand. Miller said it felt like someone had snuck up behind him and hit him with a baseball bat. It surprised but didn’t worry him.

“I’ve been Boogie boarding for more than 35 years,” he said. “I was thinking, ‘Wow, I don’t know if I want to go catch another wave or go lay on the beach for a little while before I come back in.’ ”

He let the wave take him along underwater, knowing it would soon let up.

“I was simply going to stand up and see how I felt,” he said. “I went to move, and I was paralyzed. It absolutely stunned me. One second, you’re on top of the wave having fun, and the next instant, you’re paralyzed underwater.”

In dire straits

Miller didn’t panic, but said he did a quick assessment — who was closest to him and who might see him. He said that one daughter was about 30 yards away but had her back to him. His brother-in-law was about 40 yards away but should have caught the wave.

“If he caught that wave, I knew I was in deep trouble,” Miller said. “I tried to move again and couldn’t. I knew I was in far deeper trouble than I ever dreamed. My breath was low. I was alone and in dire straits.”

He managed to roll on his back, “praying I would float to the surface, take a breath and yell for help. I got teasingly close, where that foam was, then another wave would come and just bury me.”

He rolled back on his stomach and thought perhaps the waves would push him to shallow enough water so he could roll over again, or be seen.

“I was going to give it every ounce I could to hold my breath. My only real hope was of my brother-in-law or my daughter seeing me. My biggest prayer was, ‘Please, Phil, don’t have caught that wave.’ Those last seconds, it was clearly me and death, but I wasn’t giving up. My last thought was, ‘This is how I’m going to die.’ ”

He doesn’t remember passing out. “The next thing I know, I was looking at a clear blue sky. I had no idea how I’d gotten there, and I honestly believed I had died,” Miller said.

“Then three faces popped over me; I had never seen any one of them. I kind of wondered, who were these people?” he added.

“One of them said, ‘Can you move anything?’ As soon as he said that, I heard the waves break. A flush came over me and I thought, ‘My God, I’m alive. What happened?’”

His daughter Jacqueline and Morino had seen him about the same time.

“I heard my uncle yelling for help. I turned around and my dad was floating facedown in the water,” Jacqueline said.

“We started yelling, but no one heard us. We swam him in. It took so long because he was so heavy with the wet suit,” she recalled. “We were trying to keep his head above the water, but I didn’t think he was breathing. Everyone started screaming hysterically.”

Help in the nick of time

Miller was unconscious and not breathing. Then a doctor happened to be jogging past and stopped to help.

He gently turned Miller on his side and tapped his back; water poured out of his mouth and lungs, Leanne said.

A nurse walking on the beach appeared next and found a pulse in his ankle.

Alerted by a 911 call, paramedics arrived, stabilized his neck and gave him oxygen in the ambulance to help with his labored breathing. Theirs were the first faces Miller saw.

When Miller arrived at Arroyo Grande Community Hospital, his temperature was 91 degrees. Even that was helpful, he learned later.

The cold controlled swelling around the spinal cord. Doctors found he had a broken neck and sent him to Sierra Vista Regional Medical Center in San Luis Obispo.

The next day, he had surgery to fuse two vertebrae, insert a rod and remove a tiny piece of bone snuggled up against his spinal cord.

Miller recalled that Phillip Kissel, a neurosurgeon, told him, “Fred, if you were a younger man, 15 or 20 years ago, you would have been a quadriplegic.”

“I thought that was a strange thing to say,” Miller said. “He said when he did the surgery, some arthritis had fused some of the vertebrae he was operating on.

“So when I took that blow to the top of my head, the arthritis that I’ve never felt strengthened my vertebrae column to withstand that blow,” he added.

“How lucky is that? The natural demise of my own body saved me from a more damaging injury,” Miller said.

The next day, Miller could very slightly move one toe and some fingers, a hopeful sign.

But the big question remained: Would Miller walk again? For the next few weeks, doctors and nurses told the family they simply didn’t know.

Regaining mobility

After nine days in the intensive care unit, Miller was transferred to Santa Clara Valley Medical Hospital, which specializes in spinal rehabilitation.

“I could wriggle my right foot, which was a glorious realization,” Miller said. “That gave me hope that I would never be totally paralyzed.”

His mobility came back in baby steps, he said.

Between exercises, he spent time visiting other patients. A year later, he still gets choked up when he talks about those who didn’t have his success.

“I was the only spinal cord patient in the hospital at that time who walked out on my own power,” he said. “Much of that was blind luck, and part of it was just a lot of physical work.”

Told he would stay in the rehab unit for at least six weeks and go home in a wheelchair, Miller was released in three and a half weeks — a little more than six weeks after he broke his neck.

He said he’s about “90 percent” of his former ability. He isn’t playing his weekly basketball games but is golfing and doing other activities.

He’s back at work, where he specializes in commercial property and land sales.

He also has abandoned his previous focus on building wealth and wants to produce just enough money for retirement and helping others.

“You hear about so many people working until they retire and then having some kind of debilitating stroke or heart attack,” he said. “I want to balance my life with an exercise routine and travel, make more time for reading and other hobbies.”