Death’s door to day by day

Ron Payne doesn’t worry about making new year’s resolutions. He was given the best gift possible in 2019 — life — though he remembers “next to nothing” of his drawn-out battle to cheat death. Despite having dialysis three times a week and being on a waitlist for a kidney transplant, Mr Payne, 58, is arguably the most contented person in Geraldton. He certainly one of the luckiest. Mr Payne, who operates a Marine Terrace lunch bar with wife Donna, knocked on death’s door in mid-2019. The Paynes were vaccinated against the deadly influenza, which was sweeping the State in May of that year. The couple started feeling sick around the same time and Mr Payne had a few days off. On June 18, Mrs Payne returned to their Wandina home and found him slumped on the laundry floor. He was rushed by the Royal Flying Doctor Service to Perth’s Fiona Stanley Hospital. Mrs Payne, not realising her husband was so close to death, worked the following day before driving to Perth. She was ushered into a room, where a doctor told her to “prepare for the worst”. It was, according to Mrs Payne, the start of a “horror movie”. Daughters Shanae and Alexis were called. “The doctor was very straight to the point, which I hated at the time but later appreciated,” Mrs Payne said. Mr Payne bucked the odds of surviving the first 24 hours but he developed staphylococcus aureus pneumonia in both lungs, septic shock, multiple organ failure, and had a heart attack. He was eventually brought out of a coma, but was put on life support and full-time dialysis after his kidneys shut down. The resilient Geraldton man spent two months clinging to life in hospital. Mrs Payne believed a double heart bypass operation her husband had in 2018 probably saved his life in the 2019 trauma. “I think he would have died if he hadn’t had that,” Mrs Payne said of her husband, who also has diabetes. “I don’t think he would have had the strength otherwise. “He lost about 12kg, couldn’t talk or brush his teeth or sit up in bed. He couldn’t hold a pen or eat and was only able to tolerate ice chips.” While serving coffees at his lunch bar, Mr Payne said he was feeling “not too bad” considering what he had been through. And although he recalls “very, very little” of his 51-day saga in Fiona Stanley Hospital, his wife relives it often. “It was terrible, devastating, shocking — we thought we were going to lose him,” Mrs Payne said. “The girls and I are just extremely grateful to have him. “We’ve been through hell and there’s still underlying issues. We just take it day by day. “That’s all we can do.” Mr Payne, despite his ordeal happening soon after having an influenza jab, has urged people to get vaccinated. “Get it done, whether it’s for influenza or COVID,” he said. “It’s been said the vaccination could have made me sick. But it could have saved my life also; you just don’t know. But I would get it done.”