Not Lucky, Blessed

Not Lucky, Blessed

Deacon Bill Buchta recalls accident 2 years ago and his amazing recovery

 When Deacon Bill Buchta retired after a 34-year career as a field representative with Knights of Columbus Insurance in June 2023, he had planned to spend more time with his wife, Nancy, maybe do some traveling, visit their children and grandchildren. 

But less than 3 weeks into his retirement, he found himself in a precarious situation.

It all began, he said, with a bump on his head from the back door on the couple’s SUV. While he said it hurt at the time, he didn’t think much about it until two weeks later. 

“We had a weekend trip planned with friends but I came down with what I thought was a sinus infection,” he said. “My head hurt, I had a runny nose, I was not sleeping well at night.”

“Then somebody,” he cleared his throat and looked lovingly at his wife, Nancy, “said, ‘maybe we should go to the doctor.’”

They went to a local walk-in emergency clinic but they found nothing. He had no fever, so they couldn’t give him a prescription.

Eight days later, still suffering from sinus-like symptoms and a pounding headache, he made an appointment to see a doctor.

“That was one of those times when they looked at you from half-way across the room and said ‘yep, you got something in there,’” he remembered. “I said, ‘We’ve got a trip planned, I need something.”

“Take Tylenol,” the doctor responded.

They thought about canceling their trip. Nancy said on that Saturday, she spent the day in Kearney watching her granddaughter play ball while Bill stayed home. When she came back, she said he looked awful.

“You could see the pain in his face,” and she suggested going to the emergency room. But her husband wanted to give it one more day. 

Tomorrow came and went. It was a Sunday and Nancy said he was feeling a little better but she went to Mass by herself anyway. By evening, his head was starting to throb again.

On Monday, July 31, they called the clinic and this time the nurse asked if they had checked his blood pressure. It was “185 over something,” he recalled.

Wasting no time, they went to the ER  and he was immediately sent for a CT scan. Parishioner and ER Nurse Ashley Ruble took him back to the room very quickly. It was Deacon Bill’s first God moment.

“When you’re a 65-year-old male with high blood pressure you get priority right away,” he said. 

He began vomiting profusely as he was wheeled back for the scan. They found out later that the technician who did the scan told the nurse that the doctor needed to see the scan right away. 

That was Deacon Bill’s second God moment. 

The doctor began asking questions: had he fallen recently? Had he hit his head recently?

“That one I remembered,” he said and then told the doctor a few weeks earlier, he hit his head so hard on the gate of his Sante Fe SUV, he remembered saying a few choice words that came to mind.

On the scan, the doctor explained, he had seen an older brain bleed that had stopped bleeding, but it began pushing on the brain. That doctor was Dr. Josh Anderson, a neurosurgeon in Grand Island, who just happened to be on call that day.

That was Deacon Bill’s third God moment.

“There were a lot of God moments,” Deacon smiled.

Surgery would need to be scheduled right away to relieve the pressure. Even then, Deacon Bill admitted he still hadn’t really grasped the seriousness of the situation yet.

They began calling their children who all thought their dad should go to Omaha for the surgery. They chose to stay in Grand Island.

Meanwhile, Nancy began calling everybody including Father Don Buhrman, pastor at St. Leo’s where Deacon Bill serves. She laughed when she recalled the conversation.

“It was his day off and I said ‘What are you doing?’” in a casual tone. “He said ‘Oh I’m just cleaning my grill’ ‘‘Well, Bill’s in the ER and he has to have emergency surgery, could you come?’

He anointed Bill, she said, and it was very calming. 

God moment number four.

While Nancy had been coping with the unknown, Deacon Bill said three words kept coming to him: “Come, Holy Spirit.”

“That’s my favorite 3-word prayer. This is yours. Then I got to thinking, ‘Oh, so and so had a brain bleed. Oh, yeah, she died … oh, this is serious.”

Not only that, but Deacon Bill’s oldest brother had hit his head and died of a brain bleed six years earlier. It was true—Deacon Bill’s prognosis looked grim. 

But prayer chains began and Nancy said after that, she became calm. She wasn’t crying and she was no longer nervous.

“I was just calm and peaceful,” she said. Inexplicably, even while she sat in the waiting room while her family was a “wreck,” she somehow remained calm.

“I attribute that to prayers, but I also attribute that to faith.”

God moment number five.

Meanwhile, Deacon Bill was facing his own mortality. 

“I might come through this, I might not, It’s your call, God,” he thought. “I could come out of this with stroke symptoms. You lose part of your cognitive skills or physical skills. It’s very common.”

Fortunately, the 45-minute surgery was a success. He was told later that people with this type of injury and brain bleed usually “were never the same.” 

Even the next day, when parishioner Tracy Keenportz, RN, was on duty, Deacon Bill said she was taken aback by his recovery. Most people who had the same surgery would be on a ventilator the next morning, she said. Keenportz later told them that when she saw the scan that morning, she thought to herself, “Bill will never be the same.”

Deacon Bill was out of ICU 48 hours later, and with about 20 staples on the top of his head, he returned to St. Leo’s. When people saw him and asked how he was doing, he’d answer with three simple words: blessed, amazed and humbled. 

Upon returning home, he was limited to physical activity and told to get as much sleep as he could. He laughed and said he slept “through a lot of August.” They also had to be careful when they cleaned the wound everyday with baby shampoo. He said that area is numb from where they cut through the nerves, but they also cut a good chunk of his hair.

“My brother, Bob, said I need to get a new barber,” he laughed again.

At his follow up appointment, both of his doctors said they were amazed with his speedy recovery and said he was very lucky. Deacon Bill quickly corrected them. 

“I had a wise old man tell me a long time ago another word for lucky is blessed. I was blessed,” he said. “I had people praying for me I knew nothing about …” He paused as tears welled in his eyes. 

“I’m very blessed. When people say ‘How are you? I can’t say good or okay. I’m amazed,” he said. “I’m amazed by God’s love.”